RebootYou

Rebooting RebootYou

2011-12-24T17:54:00.000-08:00

I’m getting myself back out on the road to run again, after a too-long layoff. As I was running today, I was thinking about the RebootYou website. Talk about something that needs rejuvenation! That’s another task I haven’t been taking care of. So enough of my beating myself up and on to the subject at hand: rebooting.

The original concept of RebootYou was to help people recently retired get back to being productive instead of sitting on the couch. My assumption was that there were ample opportunities in the market for gainful employment after retirement – perhaps at a slower pace or a different type of job, but staying active and engaged in something rewarding.

However, today, four years after I launched RebootYou, that assumption no longer holds true. In fact, the exact opposite situation prevails -- there are not even enough opportunities for gainful employment for many in their prime earning years -- well before they are at "retirement age." Many have been forced into involuntary joblessness not because they have aged out of the workforce, but because the overall workplace opportunity has been downsized by the economic downturn.

Making matters worse for those newly out of a job are fundamental global changes described by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum in their new book, That Used to Be Us. They point out that the combination of globalization and the information technology revolution have made many jobs obsolete or nonexistent. Even white collar jobs for high skilled workers can be outsourced to lower cost geographies. The net for would be rebooters is a vastly different climate than existed just 4 short years ago:

The demographic bulge of Baby Boomers turning 65 still looms. The oldest of the Boomers have already hit 65 and started retiring from conventional jobs.
I have no data to back this up, but I’m guessing the majority of these Boomers are not on the cutting edge of personal technology and social media techniques.
The number of job openings has shrunk considerably, not only for those "second career" jobs but for basic employment as well.
To have any hope of qualifying for a job in this new world, many boomers will have to learn new skills and will have to learn to compete on a whole new playing field.

But for those who can adapt to the new realities, there are at least two broad paths to re-employment and continued contribution: education and entrepreneurship. I plan to talk about these avenues in coming blogs. Please come back and share your thoughts, too.

Los Angeles Marathon Success!

2011-03-22T22:37:00.000-07:00

I am happy to report that on Sunday I successfully finished the Los Angeles Marathon, all 26.2 miles, in 6 hours and 42 minutes. I ran with Team in Training and raised money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It was without a doubt the most challenging marathon I’ve ever run. It started raining when the opening gun went off (actually the opening horn), and it rained the entire time.

It was no drizzle, it was an out-and-out winter storm, even though it was the first day of spring. The rain was continuous, sometimes light and sometimes coming down in buckets. And just for fun, there was a brutally cold wind whipping through the LA area with gusts up to 25-30 mph. The route took many twists and turns, so we got the wind from every direction at one time or another – front, back and both sides. And since I was soaked through and through, it sometimes cut like a knife.

In many locations the drainage could not carry off all the water, so it backed up into the street, 3-4 inches deep in places (today’s Los Angeles Times described it as “shin high,” and that was no exaggeration). There were 2 inches of rain in Santa Monica, 2.29 in downtown LA, and 6.35 inches in Van Nuys, which is just a few miles north of the marathon route.

I used a run-walk strategy which really saved the day, and at the end I had enough steam left to run all out for the last half mile. At times I felt – well, miserable: cold, wet and tired. I had to keep reminding myself that I was doing this voluntarily! I didn’t break any records for speed, but the objective was to finish. And I finished feeling strong – I did not hit the wall. As a footnote, last year’s winner, Wesley Korir, hit the wall at mile 21. He said afterward, “First of all, I’d like to thank God that I’m still alive. I thought it was the end of my life.” Hey Wesley, I felt your pain! Thousands of runners were evaluated for hypothermia and 26 were taken to hospitals for treatment.

Tami and two dear friends, Dirk and Tonya Jackson, were my support team. They braved the rain to cheer me on at the halfway point and wait for me at the finish line. All four of us, dripping wet, finally made it back to the hotel where we could dry out. I took a long hot shower (hot water never felt so good!), then we went out to dinner and had a big juicy steak to celebrate.

On Monday I was a little stiff (surprisingly, not as sore as I thought I would be) but very happy with the outcome. The Bay Area Team in Training runners raised over $100,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Team in Training runners from all over the U.S. participated in this race, as it was one of their main events, and all in all TNT raised $610,000 at the LA Marathon.

Many great friends and members of my family helped me more than double my personal goal of $3,000. My final total topped $6,000. I am deeply grateful for everyone’s financial and moral support. Their donations will go a long way toward advancing the mission of curing leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma, and improving the quality of life for patients and their families.

An update on my training

2011-01-29T22:44:00.000-08:00

Tami and I were in Hawaii for 18 days over Christmas and New Years, and I got a lot of running in on Alii Drive on the Big Island.

Alii (means “king” in Hawaiian) is the main street in Kona, and it’s the perfect length for runners – a little over 6 miles. And there are scores of runners on the street, especially in the morning. Men, women, all ages, even a few very young athletes. Some – they are easy to identify – are clearly Iron Man athletes.

I ran on nine of the days for a total of 81 miles. Longest run was 16, and also did a 14 and a 10. Today (Jan. 29) I went 18 miles, and right now I’m pretty stiff and ready to go to bed! I was thinking that this soreness was caused by lactic acid buildup, but I just spent 30 minutes reading about lactic acid and it seems that it’s not the villain at all. What the latest research shows is way too complicated to go into here, but suffice it to say we get sore for a lot of reasons, one of which is probably not lactic acid!

The fundraising efforts for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society are going extremely well. At this point my total on my Team in Training website is $4,391, but I’ve turned in a couple of checks that haven’t been recorded yet and I have received two more checks this weekend that I haven’t sent in yet. So I think I will definitely hit my upward-revised goal of $5,000 within about a week.

The support of so many people is amazing and really gives me a huge boost to do the training, even when it seems to take a long time and take a lot out of me. I started this project mainly for myself, with of course the added purpose of raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It has become a much bigger and more emotional effort, for which I am grateful. I’m still running for myself, but now I’m also running for a lot of other people – those who have had (or who have) one of these diseases (listed on my webpage), those who will be benefited by the money I and others raise, and the many people who have contributed money to L&L Society. It’s a completely different experience now.

Team in Training is a great program. It will do wonderful things for you, both physically and psychologically. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in working for a worthy cause while doing something physically demanding.

Making progress one step at a time

2010-12-09T15:06:00.000-08:00

The marathon training is coming along well. Had a slight flareup of what I thought was tendonitis, but it turns out to be just a strained muscle in my lower calf. Had it checked by my doctor today who concluded that it was in fact not tendonitis. He advised me to keep stretching, ice it down regularly and keep on running.

On Sunday I ran 11 miles, partly in the rain. Wind picked up on the way back and it was rather chilly. But overall it was a good day. By the end of December I hope to be up to 17-18 miles for my long runs.

Have shed about 6 or 7 pounds since I upped my running schedule. That's one of my goals for this effort and so far it's paying off. The old saying is true: burn up more than you take in and you will lose weight. The simplest diet regime in the world.

I'm tweeting about my training, and I think you can follow me on Twitter @leecallaway. Not sure exactly how that whole Twitter thing works -- I know how to post tweets but don't know how to recruit followers. When we work out with Team in Training, I am usually the last to finish any given lap or sequence of laps. Which means I am following all the other members of the team but none of them are following me on the track. Maybe there's a connection here -- if I could pass a few people, then I would have followers...

This is your brain on running

2010-11-16T13:50:00.000-08:00

Running for me has always been as much about mental health as physical health. It clears my mind, calms me down (after the fact) and gives me a lot of time to put my brain in neutral without most of the interruptions of the day-to-day world – phone calls, e-mail, necessary errands, etc. More than once while running, an answer to a difficult problem has just popped into my head.

I don’t usually run with an iPod or portable radio like many people do. I prefer to run without a soundtrack. I run a lot on streets and roads without sidewalks, and I like to be able to hear the cars coming toward me, especially the ones coming up behind me.

For the most part, I generally prefer to run alone rather than with other people. I find that other people like to talk when they run. I’d rather save my breath for survival.

I clearly remember how I got started running. This was some years before running caught on and became a popular sport for the masses. A friend and neighbor, Royce Hough, said one day, “We ought to run.”

“What? Run where?” I asked in all innocence.

“I don’t know, maybe around the block for starters.” He had done some research and found out – duh – that running is good for your health.

That first attempt to run around the block didn’t go so well. Our block had a hill on two sides. I made it down the first side but not up side 3.

We stuck with it, though, and pretty soon we moved to a nearby park which had two softball fields adjacent to each other. Once around both of them was about a quarter mile, as I recall. My first running shoes were Marine combat boots. They were the only shoes I’d done much running in before.

After about a year I bought my first pair of Adidas. Big improvement. I felt like Fred Astaire. OK, I felt like Fred Astaire looked. There the resemblance ended.

Gotta run now...

2010-11-14T21:55:00.000-08:00

I should be old enough to know better, but it turns out I’m not.

I’ve signed up for the Los Angeles Marathon on March 20, 2011. I know, some people think it’s an insane thing to do at any age, let alone 74.

But when the little voice inside says do it, you gotta answer. And as Marilyn Monroe said (I got it from a reputable quotation site), “Ever notice that ‘what the hell’ is always the right decision?”

So I am going to blog about my training. In a very real way, I’m rebooting myself in the running game. I’ve run eight marathons in the past (completed seven – more about that later), but haven’t tried one in about nine years. I think I’ve still got the wherewithal – we’ll see as the training gets serious. I promise to report honestly!

Today (Nov. 14) went for my longest run in quite a while – 10 miles. Very slow, though, because of the excess weight I’m lugging around. Hopefully I’ll shed some of that during the training. The run felt great. A bit tired at the end but definitely not out of gas. Ran in Redwood Shores – saw a hummingbird, three egrets, a bunch of ducks, another bunch of Canada geese, and a great blue heron. At the end of the run I was running west and looking at a gorgeous sunset – in the Bay Area we don’t get that many with just the right amount and kind of clouds, but this afternoon was sensational.

I won’t be trying to add anything scientifically or athletically significant to the running literature. I’ll just be sharing my thoughts and feelings along the way. It might even be interesting, so please check back when you have time.

Ability to reinvent yourself = the new job security

2010-08-29T11:36:00.000-07:00

The following column on career reinvention is reprinted from Business Week, August 28, 2010.

Business Week Interview: Career Reinvention

In today's tumultuous workforce, flexible talents, skill sets and a willingness to change means job security. Best-selling author and Business Week columnist Marshall Goldsmith talks with The Reinvention Institute's Pamela Mitchell on how to effectively transform careers.

You say that in today's marketplace, the old concepts of career change don't work. Why is that?

Over the past several decades, the pace of business cycles has sped up considerably. Cradle-to-grave employment is a thing of the past.In this day and age, the ability to reinvent yourself—to recombine your skills, talents, and experience to move between job functions, departments, or industries—is the new form of job security. Within the space of a decade, what's been considered to be a good field for jobs can disappear. Take a look at the phenomenon of outsourcing, which has decimated U.S.-based opportunities for many industries, like software programming. Or consider the media field. With traditional revenue models struggling and new technologies competing for audience attention, newspapers are trying to find new niches to replace lost profits.

How do you cope with these factors? Career change has tended to focus on typical job transitions—strategies for climbing to the next level of seniority within your organization or moving to a similar position within the same industry. But what do you do when your company is reducing headcount and opportunities in your field are disappearing?

Great point. How is career reinvention different from career change? In this day and age, the ability to reinvent yourself—to recombine your skills, talents, and experience to move between job functions, departments, or industries—is the new form of job security. More than just repackaging your background, career reinvention involves changing your assumptions about how your career will evolve. It means being prepared to take advantage of new opportunities by developing your skill sets with a strategic eye toward emerging business models.

That sounds great for someone who is new to his career, but what about if you've been working for 10 or more years in the same field? Is still possible to reinvent your career when all your experience has been in the same industry?

This is one of the most common questions we get! Yes, it is possible; in fact, we have a number of clients who have made successful switches after long careers in a particular industry.

That said, it is crucial that people understand that career reinvention is not an easy process. I like to draw the analogy that switching between job functions or industries is similar to moving to a foreign country. To be successful in your new land you'd have to learn the local language and familiarize yourself with its customs and cultural expectations. The same is true when you want to move to new career territory. To bridge the divide between your old and new careers, you need to learn the language and customs of your new field…and decide what to bring along from your former job.

If someone with 10 or 20 years of experience is leaving a field, that's a huge loss of talent for their organization. How does the trend toward career reinvention affect companies?

Over the next 5 to 10 years, as boomers retire and the available pool of workers shrinks, companies will be forced to rethink their strategies for retaining talented workers. But this requires that they break out of the old mindset of slotting employees into function-based boxes. They need to ask themselves: Do our people feel they can transform themselves beyond their current role, or do they need to leave us to grow?

For corporations, reinvention is the road to retention. Leaders need to become the architects of employee reinvention within their companies. One of our recommendations is that companies develop their workforce by facilitating ways for their talent to move within the firm.

Along with reducing layoff costs, this strategy can minimize the expenses associated with pursuing new business opportunities. Some forward-thinking organizations are already creating these types of reinvention programs.

What are some of the stumbling blocks people face when they're trying to reinvent their careers?

People tend to fantasize about new careers and are often unprepared for the amount of work that's involved in actually making the switch. They also have a hard time shifting out of their old work identity, which means that they often try to pitch themselves in a new field using their old language. This results in a translation failure, where hiring managers don't understand how the candidate's background applies to the job they're seeking.

Identity can also be a big obstacle when people are trying to reinvent themselves within their firm. Because they've been defined by a particular job function, they cannot get a shot at a new role. A number of clients come to us after hitting this barrier.

What advice do you have for people looking to reinvent their career?

Understand that whether it's within your current firm or a totally new field, successfully reinventing yourself requires you to establish your legitimacy as a candidate. Hiring managers, both internal and external, have goals they need to meet. Your mission is to prove—in tangible ways—that you can be a valuable asset to them in reaching those objectives.

Minimize translation failure by learning how to repackage your background so that it highlights those skills that will be directly useful in helping you succeed in your new role. Ask yourself: "How can I benefit from what I've done in the past?" Analyze your talents and identify the work successes that demonstrate them. Match those previous accomplishments to future career deliverables—this will help you see what achievements in your background are of value to hiring managers in your new field.

Source: Business Week, Marshall & Friends July 1, 2008

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jul2008/ca2008071_219231_page_2.htm

Moving the attitude adjustment hour

2010-08-21T15:13:00.000-07:00

There are many things in life we can’t control – the weather, the economy, traffic on the freeway, to name a few. But there is one thing we definitely can control – our attitude.

We wake up every morning and go out into the world with an attitude. We put on an attitude just as surely as we put on our clothes. Even if we don’t consciously adopt a certain attitude on purpose, that non-expression is itself an attitude that shows up to other people.

I thought about what makes up an attitude. What are the components? What are the ingredients?

Here’s what I came up with. I concluded that my attitude is made up of a combination of where I am on a number of scales:

· Self-respect vs. self-deprecation
· Humility vs. entitlement
· Positive vs. negative
· Easy sense of humor vs. scowl and frown
· Generosity vs. selfishness
· Forgiveness vs. anger
· Gratitude vs. thanklessness
· Optimism vs. pessimism

By just focusing on these scales – even briefly – I can figure out where I am on each one. Then I can adjust my positions to shape my attitude. It’s like the bathroom mirror I can adjust by rotating the edges. Turn it one way, normal reflection. Turn it the other way, magnified reflection.

I can look at myself in that mirror and adjust the image that I am projecting – my attitude.

Since my thoughts took this path, I find myself reminded of them every morning when I look in that mirror to shave. It’s a new enough experience that I’m pleasantly surprised every time. I’m hoping I can make this an everyday thing.

And what might an adjusted attitude do for you? Quite a few possible benefits:

· A healthier mental and physical wellbeing
· An opportunity to look at your life more positively
· Attracting people who are like you (you get back what you put out)
· Maybe a job
· And possibly the most important result from floating somewhere to the left of center (on the scales), you will find your creative juices flowing, "rebooting" yourself into a better and perhaps longer life.

It’s a new time of day for the attitude adjustment hour.

Behind the times

2010-06-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

I had a George Bush moment the other day.

No, no, not that George Bush. The first one. George H.W. Bush.

Remember when he was baffled when he saw a barcode scanner at a grocery store checkout counter? He’d never seen one before. That moment became a symbol of his being behind the times and out of touch, and may have contributed to his defeat by Bill Clinton in 1992.

Well, so far my George H.W. Bush moment hasn’t cost me the presidency, but it was a big “aha” moment for me, anyway.

I was listening to the radio and an ad came on for a barbecue specialty chain that sells high end grills. “Father’s Day special,” the ad said. “We’ve knocked off $300 on our top grill.”

Whoa.

$300 off? Wow, what do those things cost? Are they giving them away for Father’s Day?

Well, next day I happened to be close to one of the stores in that particular chain, so I stopped in.

Whoa. And wow again.

The minute I walked in, I realized that I had completely missed out on the upscaling of backyard cooking. The first model I saw had a price tag of over $3,500. It was a beauty, all right. Shiny stainless steel and a huge lid that opened to reveal a cooking surface big enough for a side of beef. And a double decker grill.

I asked a salesman if this was his most expensive grill.

“Oh, no,” he said. “There’s our top of the line.”

He pointed to a monstrous SUV of a grill with about eight burner knobs, mounted on a faux stone pedestal. “That one goes for $7,350.”

I was relieved to see that, in addition to the super-high end models, they also had a lineup of three basic black Weber kettle grills – large, medium and small. The one I use at home is a small. I also have an even smaller Smoky Joe, which retails for around $35, I think. So they haven’t forgotten about the average guy.

When my Smoky Joe wears out, I can consider upgrading to the $7,350 model.

Or I can buy 210 new Smoky Joes.

What were they thinking?

2010-06-14T22:58:00.000-07:00

A lot has been written about Chevrolet’s boneheaded attempt to kill the word Chevy, including a very good column today by Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle.

I didn’t think there was much more to say about the memo until tonight I heard a Chevrolet commercial on the radio. The last words were, “Go to Chevy.com.”

Hmm, I thought, didn’t whoever wrote that memo even go to his own website?

When I got home I typed http://www.chevy.com/ into the address bar and hit enter. The words immediately changed to http://www.chevrolet.com/ and opened up the Chevrolet site.

In the top navigation bar there was a big link to “EXPERIENCE CHEVY.” So I tried it and found a sub-link, “History and Heritage.” On that page the company displays photos of significant models, innovation and milestones from 1911 to 2008. In 15 of the captions, the car (or the company) is described as a “Chevy.”

Then I went to the search bar – this is still on the Chevrolet site – and typed in “chevy.” Up came a page with RESULTS 1-10 OF ABOUT 13,900 FOR CHEVY.

All righty, then. Didn’t exactly think that one through, did they?

Well, as Jon points out, they’ve now backtracked and said they really like the word Chevy, after all.

But I’m filing that in my “What were they thinking?” file, along with subprime mortgages, credit default swaps, drilling for oil a mile under the Gulf of Mexico with no emergency shutoff plan, and telling your staff you’re going hiking on the Appalachian Trail when you’re really headed to Argentina to see your secret lover.

More Montgomery baseball

2010-06-14T22:51:00.000-07:00

(Please see previous post dated June 11 for context)
We’re going back to Montgomery to visit family in July and we plan to go see the Montgomery baseball team play. Once known as the Rebels, they are now called the Biscuits, for reasons I hope to find out. And they play in a new park called Riverwalk Stadium. We’re really looking forward to the game.

But no hill, no train smoke, and a team called the Biscuits – will it really be Montgomery baseball? We’ll find out!

I have fond memories of the old Montgomery Rebels, and I can name almost the whole lineup from those teams of the 40s:

Pitchers: Stan Coulling, Marty Arrante, Chester “The Great” Covington, among others
Catcher: “Mop” Brown, who whistled three quick times every few minutes. I don’t remember Mop’s real first name, but it may have been Charles.
1b: Al Brightman or Mac MacWhorter (Mac was a utility player who once played every position in the field in one game – one per inning – and was the winning pitcher!)
2b: Roy Carlin
SS: Billy Spears
3b: Ray Wilson (A hometown boy. Ray’s dad, who always sat behind the Montgomery dugout on the third base side, was his biggest fan and would cheer him on with a loud “GoRay, GoRay, GoRay” whenever he came to bat)
LF: Johnny Creel, who stuck his bubble gum on the button of his cap when he came to bat (there were no batting helmets in those days).
CF: Billy Martin, a speedster who was the stolen base leader (and center field mountain climber).
RF: Art Rebel, clearly the most appropriately named player on the team.
Manager: Frank Skaff, and later Charlie Metro

The radio broadcasts were done by an announcer named Dave Manners. Like all broadcasters back in the day, for out-of-town games he would sit in the station studio in Montgomery and re-create the action from ticker tape messages. The message that would actually come across was something like, “Spears grounds out to short.” Dave would describe a whole imaginary at bat, pitch by pitch, sometimes running the count to 3 and 2, and add made-up color as if he were at the game. When Dave would pause, you could hear the tickertape clattering away in the background.

They don’t make ‘em (up) like that anymore.

The sounds of silence

2010-06-11T21:08:00.000-07:00

(With a bow to Simon and Garfunkel)

“You will hear some silence while you wait.”

That’s part of the conference call recorded message that plays when you dial in before the call has officially started. The whole phrase goes like this:

“The leader has not yet arrived. Please stand by. You will hear some silence while you wait.”

It always intrigues me. How do you “hear” silence?

Whoa. Pretty deep thought there. Maybe a philosophy class topic. One hand clapping, and all that.

In my brain it connected to another thought: On the radio, you never hear silence. “Dead air” is what the broadcasters call it. When dead air happens, it’s because somebody forgot to throw a switch or turn a knob or activate something. And for the radio people it’s a bad thing.

But moving on to the next thought, there is a time when you hear silence on the radio. On purpose. And nobody gets fired for it.

It’s in a broadcast of a baseball game. There are frequent lulls in the action on the field, so there are frequent pauses in the announcers’ talk. Those silences – when the announcers go quiet and all you hear is the faint murmuring of the crowd and the occasional shout of a vendor – are one of the endearing attributes of a baseball broadcast that makes it so pleasant, so accessible, so – well, listenable.

I grew up listening to broadcasts of baseball in Montgomery, Alabama. Our team’s name, of course, was the Rebels (Forget, hell) and they played in a ballpark named Cramton Bowl.

They don’t make parks like that anymore. It was used for both baseball and football, so it had a funny shape. There were grandstands behind the plate and along both baselines, but then on the first base/right field side there was a much larger extension of stands for football games. The right field line in baseball was also approximately one sideline of the football field.

When configured for baseball, there was this hill in center field. It was not a small rise, it was a serious hill. A center fielder in this park had to have mountain goat skills to catch long flies hit anywhere between left center and deep straightaway center.

And just beyond the left field fence, behind a big row of trees, there was a ravine with a railroad track running through it. In the days when there were still steam engines, a train would go by, chugging and puffing away, and if the wind was right, huge clouds of black coal smoke would roll up from the ravine and blow into the playing field. The left fielder would disappear in the smoke.

You had to be tough to be a Montgomery Rebel.

More in the next post.

Stayin' alive

2010-06-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

I got a letter – an “official e-mail,” no less – from a “Mr. Adams Williams,” who identified himself as “Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.”

Mr. Williams advised me that “one Mr. David Woodruff, who claim to be your business associate/partner here in Africa,” was further claiming that I was dead and that “all relevant documentation/Informations regarding your Payment/Transfer be changed to him as the beneficiary of the payment” of $1,850,000 which, Mr. Williams said, the government of Nigeria owed me.

“We need to confirm from you if it’s really true that you are dead as made mention by your associate. You should note that, if we do not hear from you, it automatically means that you are actually dead and the information passed to us by David Woodruff is correct.”

If I was not dead, the letter went on, I was to “respond to this e-mail immediately” with my name, address, and other identification information, plus a copy of either my driver’s license or my passport.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I have not had great success in responding to these “help me collect millions of dollars for you” e-mails. So I decided, with some reluctance, not to answer.

Several weeks later I got to thinking about it – “Mr. Adams Williams” didn’t hear from me, so to his mind I am “actually dead” and “David Woodruff” has probably collected all the money that was rightfully mine.

That Woodruff. He’s always doing something like this. And to think he used to be my “associate/partner” in Africa. Why I ever trusted that guy in the first place I’ll never know.

And what can you say about the government of Nigeria? They’ve owed me money for years and have stiffed me time and again.

But back to my being “actually dead.” I suppose I should let my insurance company know so the life policy will pay off. And probably Social Security, too, so they can forward my checks to my wife. I mean my surviving spouse.

But there’s a silver lining. Since I’m “actually dead,” I no longer have to floss. Better yet, I won’t have to go the DMV later this month and renew my driver’s license.

I’ll just join all those other bad drivers on the road who really need to get a life.

Don't be inactive!

2010-06-05T13:30:00.000-07:00

You gotta hand it to those bankers.

When it comes to separating you from your money, they’re creative geniuses.

Most recent case in point: On my most recent statement for by business charge card, there was a $20 item. The description: “INACTIVE ACCOUNT FEE.”

Well, now! They want to charge me $20 for not using my charge card? Come on! I agree it’s legitimate for them to charge me interest when I charge something, because I am in effect borrowing money from the bank to pay for something. No problem there.

But a $20 clip for doing nothing?

I protested. The young banker where I do business professed to be surprised by the charge, and called someone somewhere out there in call center land to see about getting it removed. After surprisingly little persuasion on his part, the answer came back, OK. The charge was removed.

(I can envision what was going through the mind of the person on the other end of the call: “Darn, another one caught on. Oh well, there are millions more who will just pay it and not complain.”)

You have to look for life lessons wherever you can find them, and I found one here:

Don’t be inactive. Stay active.

I don’t mean to necessarily go out and charge something. I mean keep moving, stay actively engaged in life, don’t sit around and do nothing.

If you’re recently retired or fired or laid off, don’t sit there and bemoan your fate. Get off your chair and reinvent yourself. In fact, go to www.rebootyou.com and look around. You’ll find all kind of resources there to help you.

Either that, or send me $20.

Nobody said it was going to be easy

2010-05-23T22:38:00.000-07:00

I’m reprinting below a series of e-mails I got from a lady named Jane Waldmann, a Rebooter in spirit and actions. I’m sharing them, with her permission, because (1) I suspect there are a lot of people in similar circumstances and (2) Jane is continuing her efforts despite some setbacks. I admire her tenacity and determination, and I’m hoping her words will be an inspiration to you.

To: info@rebootyou.com
Subject: Reinventing Jane

I would loooooooooooooove to reinvent myself. I have teaching degrees in English and Art but only taught HS English for a few months, quit to have my first child. I then was a stay at home Mom for 12 years raising 3 children. When I went back to work I did it in the office arena. Not much fun there.

I looooooooooooooooove computers though, self taught everything I know on them, PC and Mac. Almost a geek!! But…

The problem is money. How does one reboot without money? All the computer degrees, certificates or courses cost a lot. My husband still works and although he barely makes enough to pay our bills, I do not qualify for any type of low-income training or scholarships.So here I sit watching my life go by very rapidly without finding out what could have been.

Jane Waldmann

I wrote Jane back with some words of encouragement. I noted that she seemed to be a good writer and she’s a self starter. She has replied twice. Here are her e-mails:

Reply No. 1:

Thank you (for writing) me regarding my email. You ... showed genuine concern and encouragement. I will explore the Reboot website more thoroughly.

One of my biggest obstacles is that I am floundering all over the place. I have an art degree and love crafts but find the money does not pay the bills at first anyway. Also I love the computer and thought about graphics courses. I am not sure which direction to go in but have been praying about it. I have no doubt that when I do figure out what I enjoy and want to excel at, I will have determination and race ahead.

You say writing but I have never really been a fan of writing a lot, although I do have a command of the English language. I still favor my artistic side. I have combined the two once, when I was a temp, producing a monthly newsletter for a property management company (but that only lasted 9 months).

So I will explore your site and the web and dabble in temping and real estate ( I have my license) until I can say, "That's it, that's what I want to do!!!!"

Thanks again,
Jane Waldmann

Reply No. 2

Here is an update: I got on unemployment. (Had an accounting asst. job and was fired for not being a "team player.")

And because of that our local county Workforce Alliance gave me funding for $4000 to take a CIW course (Certified Internet Webmaster).

I finished in Feb. and enjoyed it. However I discovered most of the jobs in this market require much more than just a certificate, namely college and lots of experience. I also discovered I do not enjoy designing websites.

I did however love the Photoshop classes which were included. I also found a website in which I can upload designs and they will print and sell the fabric.

I think I am heading in the right direction. My unemployment has run out, though, and I just hope I can figure out how to make some extra money without compromising my creativity by getting an office job. I really believe, and so does my hubby, that another office job would just about kill me!!

Thank you again for all your encouragement,
Jane

The homeland security threat level today: pink?

2010-05-21T18:55:00.000-07:00

My wife and I recently took a short vacation to Cancun, Mexico. On our way home, we learned something new about how our borders are protected.

Before I get to this insight, I’m happy to say that Cancun is delightful. Clean and new – only about 40 years old. Admittedly, what we saw was not Cancun proper but “hotel row,” an island shaped like a 7, lined with both moderately priced and luxury hotels, malls and theme parks, and connected to the mainland by bridges at both ends.

And the beach is postcard beautiful – sparkling white sand and the Caribbean a brilliant turquoise in the shallows and a rich blue in the deeper water.

Our itinerary included overnight stays both ways in Los Angeles, there being no direct flights between San Francisco and Cancun. So we went through both outbound security and inbound customs at LAX upon our return.

The TSA people were especially alert as we left. At the security point, they pulled my wife’s luggage for detailed inspection. The offending substances: Nordstrom delicate fabric wash, a white powder in a small plastic container along with alleged facial creams, all in approved 3-ounce plastic containers. The fabric wash didn’t pass the X-ray test, so the inspector had to take it out for hands-on inspection.

No problem. We complimented them on their diligence. Hey, they were doing their job and we thought they were doing it quite well.

After a wonderful stay in Cancun, we came back to LAX. After the usual long wait to show our passports, we made our way to the exit where a customs agent was collecting the tourist card you must present to authorities when you return from Mexico.

My wife, dressed in comfortable travel clothes that included a pink tunic top and pink pashmina wrap, handed the document to the guard.

He gave it a quick glance, said, “OK,” and waved us through. The speed surprised us.

“Is that it?” my wife asked.

“That's it,” the guard smiled. “Terrorists don’t wear pink.”

Formation Flying

2010-05-04T23:43:00.000-07:00

I was out running the other day and three ducks happened to fly over on a glide path down to a small man-made lake. They were in formation, one in the lead of a small “V” and the other two on either side.

Later that day I saw a flock of pigeons swirling and swooping over a three-story building on a main thoroughfare in a commercial district. They were not in what you would call a formation, but they were somehow staying roughly together.

If the ducks were a team, the pigeons were a mob. Or maybe a high-energy crowd, to put it more charitably.

It was the ducks, though, that kept my interest. I did a little research on duck and bird formation flying and found out that formation flying – especially in a V – is more efficient for all the birds except the one in the lead. And flocks of birds alternate the lead role on long migrations so as to evenly distribute the fatigue of covering long distances.

Seeing those ducks the other day – they were in and out of my line of vision in two or three seconds – brought to mind one thrilling formation sight I will never forget.

The Navy Blue Angels were performing at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California. A quick geography primer: Moffett is on the shore of the southernmost end of San Francisco Bay. Nearby are salt evaporation ponds separated by wide dikes or berms. There are trails on these berms that are open for hiking, running or biking. Some of them extend well out beyond the salt ponds into the bay itself.

I decided that the end of one of these berms jutting out into the bay would be a great place to watch the Blue Angels. And indeed it was. I was completely alone – not like the packed crowds at Moffett. Of course the Moffett runways were the center point of all the Blue Angels’ amazing aerobatics, but if you’ve ever seen them you know they cover a lot of real estate on their approaches and departures from the center point.

At one point late in the show the four who fly together formed up in a diamond formation and came soaring past me in a thunderous roar, banked for a right turn. They were going from my left to my right and passing directly in front of me. It was a spectacular sight.

What I hadn’t realized was that there were some ducks in the water right below where I was standing. Just at the moment when the Blue Angel formation was directly in front of me, the ducks must have been startled and burst up out of the water, wings beating furiously, water dripping from their feathers as they became airborne.

The ducks came up out of the water in formation! I really don’t think they planned it – but if they had they could not have executed it more perfectly. They flew up and to the right on a trajectory that perfectly mirrored the Blue Angels. So what I saw in one field of view was the Blue Angels in formation in the distance and the ducks in formation just a few yards away from me. It was a jaw-dropping, stunning, unbelievable sight.

I put these stock photos together just for the fun of it. Many is the time I have wished that I could have caught that scene for real with a camera, but it is just as well that I didn’t have one because I couldn’t have reacted fast enough. Anyway, I was so blown away I probably would have dropped my camera in the water.

Flipping and YouTubing

2010-05-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

I figured it was time. High time, in fact.

Time to join the YouTube Generation.

If I’m going to promote rebooting and reinvention, I’d better do a little rebooting and reinventing myself. And a good place to start would be getting into the 21st century.

So the first thing I did was to buy a Flip video camera.

My reaction? Wow!

I was absolutely amazed at the capability of this stunning little device, completely impressed with its ease of use and blown away by how simple it is to take videos and then get them onto your computer.

I’d read a lot of praise for Flip, and now I understand why. It’s all true. Very small little box, not much inside except the Flip, a one-page quick start guide (that’s actually understandable), the warranty, a little carrying pouch and a wrist strap. It came with the battery half charged so all I had to do was take it out of the box and shoot a video, a 23-second epic of my wife sitting at our breakfast room table.

I slid the little button on the side down and out popped a USB arm. Slipped it into a USB port on the side of my laptop, and the Flip software automatically uploaded from the device to the computer. Downloaded my first video onto the computer.

In less time than it takes to write about it I was in the video business.

End of Part 1, now time to move on to Part 2: YouTube.

Figuring out how to upload a video to YouTube wasn’t as simple as learning to use the Flip, but after some trial and error, I figured it out. Now my first video (and a second test shot today) are uploaded to YouTube, along with – how many others? Several hundred billion or so?

Doesn’t matter, I did it.

Yes, I’m late to the party, but that doesn’t matter either. The important thing is that I have just opened a couple of doors to new worlds, and I feel great about it.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star…

2010-05-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

“Hi honey, Happy Anniversary. Here’s your present.”

“Ooh, wonderful, what is it? It feels like a picture frame.”

“Open it up! You’ll love it!”

(Sound of paper being ripped off a frame.)

“Oh. Wow, what is this? What does the writing say? I don’t have my glasses. ‘Inter…’”

“International Star Registry.”

“International Star Registry? What is that?”

“I named a star for you to show you how much I love you.”

“You did what?”

“Named a star for you. This is the document that identifies the star and certifies that it is named for you.”

“Wait. It identifies a star named for me?”

“Yep. Just for you.

“But… there are so many stars up there. How do I know which one is named for me?”

“Oh, honey, that’s no problem. Look what’s on the certificate: the telescopic coordinates of the star, an informative booklet with charts of the constellations plus a larger, more detailed chart with the star named for you circled in red. So we can find it any time we want to with a telescope.”

“We don’t have a telescope. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“Well, we’ll get one so we can look at your star.”

“So do I now own this star?”

“Well, no. The International Star Registry doesn’t own the star, so they can’t sell it to you. But the star is now associated with you. It is something you can point at to know that there is something special out there for you.”

“OK. So, if I don’t own it, will astronomers and scientists recognize it as ‘my’ star?”

“No. The International Star Registry is a private company that provides Gift Packages. Astronomers will not recognize your name because your name is published only in the International Star Registry Star catalog. They periodically print a book called 'Your Place in the Cosmos,' which lists the stars that they’ve named.”

“Well, dear, thank you for your thoughtful gift. I’m really touched to have a star named for me, that I need a telescope to see, that I don’t own but is ‘associated with me,’ that astronomers don’t recognize as mine, and that’s listed in a book which this outfit ‘periodically prints.’”

“Yes, honey, and because it’s you, I got you the Heirloom Ultimate version. Look! The certificate is beautifully matted in an architecturally inspired frame designed by Stanford White. The matte is a vintage eggplant color complimenting the colors in the certificate. And look what else: The personalized star chart is framed also in this package. The frame measures 24 1/2" X 20 1/2" and matches the frame in the deluxe package.”

“Who’s Stanford White?”

“I don’t know, I guess he’s a frame designer. Must be famous.”

“I guess I’m bowled over, even if it was free.”

“Uh, honey, it wasn’t free. You know they couldn’t do this and give it away.”

“You paid money for this?”

“Well, yes I did, but it’s our anniversary.

“How much?”

“Uh, well, it was only $489.00.”

“WHAT? FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-NINE DOLLARS?”

“Uh, yeah, plus shipping and handling.”

“Well, honey, I have to say I never expected to have a star named for me. And for only, say $500, after shipping and handling. You really know how to make your wife happy.”

“Anything for you, dear.”

“I’m almost speechless. I can only say one thing. You shouldn’t have. Really.”

Expanding the scope

2010-04-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

Since I started this blog, all my posts (with a few exceptions) have had something to do with rebooting or reinvention.

I've decided to expand my topic areas to include random subjects that I find interesting. So you will see more blogs that are not really "RebootYou"-oriented.

I'm doing this because of late I feel a renewed urge to write -- just to get things down on paper. Or on the screen. Have been a writer in one form or another most of my life, and I enjoy it. On rare occasions someone will say they enjoyed something I wrote. That makes me think I occasionally have something to say, so I am going to say it!

A couple of days ago I wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times, which they probably won't publish. The subject was Standard & Poor's downgrading of Greek debt, and the ensuing tailspin of markets around the world. My question: S&P is a bond rating agency. These agencies were major culprits in the financial meltdown because of the spurious AAA ratings they slapped on collateralized debt obligations made up of subprime mortgages. So why should we believe them now? Did they suddenly get religion, and we should go back to accepting their ratings without question?

One more thing I don't get about this mess.

The last word on Creamsicles

2010-04-29T22:28:00.001-07:00

I have just finished a delicious raspberry Creamsicle.

First one I’ve had in too long to count. And it was just as good as I remembered. (Please see the preceding two blogs.)

Today I mentioned my “ice cream man” memories to a friend who told me that if I went to the grocery store and looked in the frozen foods section, I could find Creamsicles. “I know they are there,” he said. “My wife eats them all the time.”

That’s all I needed. Within 30 minutes I was in my neighborhood supermarket and sure enough, right in the ice cream freezer, there they were. I bought an 8-pack of orange and raspberry. As the Campbell’s soup ad used to say, “Mmmmm, good!”

The Creamsicle is a derivative of the 105-year-old Popsicle. In 1905, 11-year-old Frank Epperson of San Francisco left a mixture of powdered soda, water, and a stirring stick in a cup on his porch. It was a cold night, and Epperson awoke the next morning to find a frozen pop. He called it the "Epsicle."

It was a hit with his friends at school, and later with his own kids. They constantly called for "Pop's 'sicle." So in 1923, Epperson changed the name and applied for a patent. A couple of years later, Epperson sold the rights to the brand name Popsicle to the Joe Lowe Company in New York.

The Good Humor Company, a subsidiary of Unilever, bought the rights to all the “sicles” in 1989. Popsicle®, Creamsicle® and Fudgsicle® are all trademarks of Unilever.

I still need to figure out how my memory served up “Dreamsicle” instead of “Creamsicle.”

Neuron asleep at the switch

2010-04-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

Last night I had an exercise in remembering something from my childhood maybe 65 years ago. The overall experience I was remembering was the arrival of the “ice cream man” on our street. Specifically, I recalled (or thought I recalled) a specific product the ice cream man sold. It was a combination bar of frozen juice with ice cream inside. I remembered it as a “Dreamsicle.” I wrote about it in yesterday’s blog.

This morning, in the shower, I had a flash: It wasn’t a “Dreamsicle,” it was a “Creamsicle.” I had remembered the sound of the word but I pulled up an incorrect rhyming version of it from my memory. The minute I got out of the shower I rushed to the computer, pulled up the incorrect blog and corrected it.

This got me to wondering how memories are created, stored and recalled in the brain. I Googled “how memory works” and found Public Broadcasting’s Nova Science Now website. There I was able to view a video of neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried talking about how memories are stored and retrieved.

According to Fried, an experience (say, the arrival of the ice cream man and buying stuff from him) is captured by a single neuron, or a group of neurons firing together. When the call goes out to recall that memory, the same neuron or neuron group fires again.

So let’s say each neuron in the group of neurons that captured the original visit by the ice cream man remembered one part of the experience: one captured the look of the ice cream box, another the sound of the cow bell that signaled the ice cream man’s arrival, and several others the taste of various goodies in the box.

But on further reflection, there must have been one neuron for each quality of each particular product – in this case, the Creamsicle. One neuron got the flavor, one got the temperature, one the location of the ice cream inside the icy blanket around it, one the stick frozen into the Creamsicle to provide a handle and, finally, one got the name.

So let’s dig a little further. Maybe there were several neurons assigned to grab the name. One got that it ended in “… sicle.” Another got that the first syllable sounded like “…eem.” And the one in charge of getting the first letter probably got “C” at the time – but something happened to it along the way.

Now, 65 years later, along comes a memory call: Hey, remember that bar with frozen juice on the outside and ice cream on the inside? What was it? Every frozen-bar-with-ice-cream neuron hustles up to bring its part: Here’s “..sicle,” and here’s “…eem,” and… “Hey, where’s the neuron with the first letter?”

Well, it turns out that neuron was asleep at the switch, as it were. “Duh, I’ve forgotten. Maybe it was ‘D’ for ‘Dreamsicle,’ because they were pretty dreamy-good. So I’ll offer up ‘D.’”

For a few hours, the other neurons accepted the D. But this morning the faulty first-letter neuron snapped awake and said “Hey, wait a minute, it was C, not D. Creamsicle, not Dreamsicle.”

Why did it fail? It came close, but it failed. Has it been doing other things since the ice cream man came by? Remembering algebra, sunsets, the smell of apple pie in the oven, an acquaintance’s name, a dentist’s appointment? Has it been overworked?

Or has it been lying there in the cranial soup, with no responsibilities other than remembering “C?” Did it just go flabby? Use it or lose it, and I didn’t use it?

I’ll probably never know. But I have certainly profited by the experience. I’ve delved deeper into my brain than I thought I would. And I may know a little more about how this amazing organ works – maybe one neuron’s worth.

One thing is for sure. After all this, that dumb neuron better not come up with D again.

Rebooting memories of Creamsicles

2010-04-27T22:08:00.000-07:00

I just read a story by writing instructor and coach Sharon Lippincott entitled “Too Old for Ice Cream,” and it took me back. (I "met" Sharon when she responded to one of my blogs,and I visited her blog at http://heartandcraft.blogspot.com/.)

Her story was about an encounter – or rather, a non-encounter – with a modern-day ice cream truck – a red van with a raised roof, a neighborhood-tempting sound system, numerous big decals and a cooler hung under the window on the passenger side. She was struck by the contrast with the “white, spotlessly clean” ice cream trucks of her youth.

The teenage driver passed her right by without stopping – twice – and Sharon wondered if he thought she looked too old to be buying ice cream. Upon reflection, she happily dismissed this notion, went to her freezer at home, pulled out a Klondike bar and thoroughly enjoyed it. Her pang of nostalgia, it turned out, was about ice cream trucks, not ice cream.

Even though the story was published in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review almost three years ago, it was as fresh for me as a frosty Popsicle. It brought to mind the ice cream vendors when I was a little boy – before the days of ice cream trucks, when “the ice cream man” came by pushing a clunky white box mounted on two bike wheels or pedaling a bike-powered version of the same basic box.

They didn’t have amplified sound systems. They had cowbells hanging on their handlebars. Still, you could hear them half a block away.

The chocolate and vanilla delicacy known today as an Eskimo Pie today was a “Big Boy” to us. There were also Fudgsicles, which were all chocolate with no coating. But Popsicles were Popsicles then, just as they are today. And every now and then, if we were lucky, the ice cream man would have Creamsicles, which was a Popsicle on the outside and ice cream on the inside. Heaven on a stick!

The ice cream man – who more often than not was a teenager – also had something really special at the bottom of his box – dry ice. That’s how they kept the ice cream from melting. If you begged long enough, and the ice cream man was feeling generous, he would break off a tiny piece of dry ice and give it to you.

It was so cold you couldn’t hold it in your hand. You had to toss it back and forth or it would burn you. You would put a penny on the dry ice and it would sizzle – in addition to getting very cold. If you were really brave and cool (no pun intended), you’d put the dry ice in your mouth (making sure you had enough saliva to keep it swishing around) and “blow smoke” by breathing out with your mouth open.

I agree with Sharon that you never get too old for ice cream. Sometimes, in the interest of health, the refreshment option is frozen yogurt. But for genuine goodness and perfect taste, nothing beats old fashioned ice cream.

Except, every now and then, a Creamsicle.

Smile, things may be looking up

2010-04-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

There was encouraging news for rebooters in the Sunday (4/25/10) New York Times Business section.

The headline: “Rays of Hope For Job Hunters;” the subhead: “Postings are climbing, and baby boomers are retiring. Can a turnaround be near?”

The article, by Phyllis Korkki, reports on improving signs in the labor market. “Employers are beginning to hire again – or at least think about it,” Korkki reports. “There are now some very positive signs… The shift is most apparent in job postings, which have begun to surge.”

The article quoted Tamara Erickson, an author and work-force consultant, as pointing out an intensifying long-term trend: “a worker shortage caused by the continuing retirement of baby boomers.”

“Suddenly, she said, employers are starting to realize that they don’t have, or won’t have, people with the skills they need. Some are starting to worry, she said, while others ‘have no idea what’s going to hit them.’”

This trend means that people who want to keep working in their later years may have the option of deferring their retirement or staying employed by filling a familiar position on a consulting or part-time basis.

The article is side-by-side with a first-person article by Jeremy Jaech, a serial rebooter who has re-started his career twice after “retiring.” He was co-founder of the Aldus Corporation, which created PageMaker and made him rich enough at age 29 that he didn’t have to work.

After playing golf until it was no longer fun, he went back to work and founded the Visio Corporation, another successful venture that developed software to make flow charts, organization charts, office layouts and other diagrams on a desktop computer.

Again he “retired,” this time in his 40s, and became involved working on nonprofit organizations including the University of Washington in research.

Still, not enough, so back to work. This time he founded Verdiem, which provides software to reduce energy consumption of PC networks. His summation:

“Of course, the money has been great. But the actual pleasure of working, and the real reason I can’t stay retired, is the joy of collaborating with a bright team of people to move an idea forward and watch it grow.”

Eating some of my own dog food

2010-04-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

There is a phrase heard in businesses that build credibility with customers by using their own products: “Eating our own dog food.”

I haven’t been eating much of my own dog food lately. I’m asking people to join in a conversation about reinvention and rebooting on this blog and I’ve been missing in action.

OK, an honest confession is good for the soul. Consider this my confession. Today I’m back and I intend to be more diligent and regular about posting my thoughts. Maybe some of them will actually be interesting.

One of my original ideas in starting RebootYou.com was that there was going to be a flood of Baby Boomers retiring and looking to reinvent themselves, and that my website was where they were going to come to find resources and tell their stories. (I also wanted to reach people of any age who needed or wanted to reboot – and still do – but for now let’s just talk about retirees.)

RebootYou.com seemed like a good idea, until the Great Recession came along and sent the unemployment rate above 10%. There was a flood of people, all right, but they were the young and middle aged folks who lost their jobs when the economy tanked. For a retiree seeking a paying job in perhaps another field, or thinking about becoming a consultant in her or his career field, there was suddenly a crowd of people also looking for that same job. They were younger, hungrier, perhaps more talented or more current on the latest technology, more desperate to find gainful employment to feed their families and pay their bills. In other words, tough competition.

At the same time, the number of jobs shrank. Companies going bankrupt or falling on hard times did what they always do – they cut staff, eliminated positions, retrenched.

So the picture changed. Fewer jobs available for the potential rebooter, more people vying for those jobs.

I’ve thought about the whole arena of retiree reinvention a lot in the last couple of years and asked myself, what can be done? Is there a course of action the average retiree can take if he or she wants to keep working after retirement?

The main thing I’ve come up with is going back to school. Twice in my lifetime I’ve rebooted by going back to school. It worked both times. So I am going to do some research to find out if there has been any discernible uptick in retirees going back to school to upgrade their knowledge and skills since the recession came down on us like the proverbial ton of bricks.

If you’ve done this, know of someone who has, or (I wish) had any information or statistics on the subject, please post a response. I look forward to hearing from you.

Mr. Considerate

2010-02-06T20:50:00.000-08:00

Today I came across a scene that stopped me in my tracks.

A motorcycle was parked on the sidewalk outside Whole Foods in Redwood City. It was unusual that it was on the sidewalk, but that was not the most unusual part.

Beside the motorcycle, partly under the engine, lay a small blue towel, folded neatly. On the towel was a small plastic bowl. In the bowl was a quantity of motor oil, which I assume had leaked out of the motorcycle engine.

This was amazing! The owner of this motorcycle was so considerate of his fellow citizens that he had placed a little container under his engine to catch the dripping oil and keep it off the sidewalk. And he had it on a towel as further insurance!

Think about that. Can you imagine a more civic-minded, caring act? Seriously!

You know this guy has to be the most polite, courteous and thoughtful person in town – maybe on the whole planet.

Upon reflection, I figured the motorcycle was probably owned by one of the employees in the store. There was quite a bit of oil in the container, and if the bike belonged to a shopper, it couldn’t have leaked that much oil in a short time.

But this possibility did not take away from the charity and thoughtfulness of the owner. Just completely cool.

It reminded me of what my wife and I saw on a visit to Japan. In Tokyo, a businessman walking down the street – suit, tie and briefcase – stopped to pick up a stray piece of paper on the sidewalk and deposit it in a nearby trash can.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a few more people like this in the world? OK, I know we’ll never convert everybody, maybe not even a lot of people. But how about just a few more thoughtful and considerate people to take the edge off the brutish rudeness that is so pervasive today?

Mr. Motorcycle Driver, I salute you. The world could sure use more people like you.

On being an optimist

2009-11-27T21:01:00.000-08:00

I was asked the other day what it takes to be a rebooter. I think the single most important requirement is optimism.

An optimist has a strong sense that whatever path he or she takes, it’s going to work out fine. Part of the reason, I believe, is that an optimistic person works harder at making things turn out right than a pessimist. When you are sure things are going to hell, they usually do. I don’t know what the actual correlation is, but my instinct tells me it’s a strong one.

It takes more courage to be an optimist when the going is tough. I was moved to look up some quotes on optimism. Here are the best ones I’ve found so far:

For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else. – Winston Churchill.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. –Helen Keller.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. Winston Churchill.

I’m not suggesting that being an optimist will land you a job. But I would suggest that pessimism is a less effective option!

Reinvention of self -- again

2009-09-06T22:29:00.000-07:00

Three years ago I did a collateral reinvention when I started teaching an online course in Crisis Communications at the University of Maryland University College.

This has turned out to be a very satisfying reboot. I’d always harbored a desire to teach, and UMUC is a great place to realize this goal. While I would still like to try the classroom in-person mode, teaching online has quite a few advantages that in-person classes do not have. Asynchronous teaching and learning can be very convenient for both the teacher and the student.

This fall I’m branching out yet again, adding a new subject to teach in addition to Crisis Communications. The new subject is Intercultural Communications and Leadership. The material looks very interesting and challenging, and I’m looking forward to engaging with a new set of students in a different academic discipline.

Nancy J. Adler, author of International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, one of the textbooks we’ll be using, frames the teaching task this way in her first chapter:

“Focusing on global strategies and management approaches from the perspective of people and culture allows us to understand the influence of national and ethnic cultures on organizational functioning. Rather than becoming trapped within the commonly asked (and unfortunately misleading) question of whether organizational dynamics are universal or culturally specific, this book focuses on the crucially important questions of when and how to be sensitive to culture.”

The company I spent most of my corporate career working for – Pacific Gas & Electric – had only minimal international operations, but my consulting career has carried me into several large organizations that operate around the world. I get a firsthand look at the interplay of communications and culture almost every day. The world is now the business arena. As Adler puts it:

Managing the global enterprise and modern business management have become come synonymous. The terms international, multinational, transnational, and global can no longer be relegated to a subset of organizations or to a division within the organization. Definitions of success now transcend national boundaries. In fact, the very concept of domestic business may have become anachronistic. Today “the modern business enterprise has no place to hide. It has no place to go but everywhere.”

I feel certain that the teacher in this course is going to learn as much as the students. Considering who the teacher is, probably a lot more.

Tag, you're out!

2009-09-04T07:56:00.001-07:00

A while back, I wrote somewhere (I thought it was in this blog, but I can’t find it) that the creation of RebootYou.com was a rebooting for me, and I needed to learn how to manage a website.

Well, this summer I decided that the time had come to quit procrastinating and learn HTML and XHTML so I could do my own tinkering with http://www.rebootyou.com/. People told me, “Sure, you can learn it. I learned it, so surely you can.”

So I enrolled in “Publish on Web Using HTML/XHTML” at Foothill College. It was an online course, a delivery method with which I’m familiar because I teach an online course at the University of Maryland University College. I was excited about learning something new, and about being on the student end of an online course.

I got into it, and early on I discovered that the people who invented the web were smarter than I thought. Way smarter. These languages are not simple. And they are mercilessly unforgiving. Make one mistake in an opening or closing tag (don’t ask) and HTML simply refuses to perform. It just sits there, lines and lines of code on your computer, and because you left out one punctuation mark or got some tiny part of the syntax wrong, it does nothing.

Talk about user unfriendly. I felt it was user hostile!

To make a long story short, when I bombed the mid-term I realized that I had bitten off more than I had time to chew at this particular moment, so I withdrew from the course. Licking my wounds, I left the field of combat and said, “OK, I’ll come back another day.”

A month or so later, in a completely unrelated development, I was participating in a virtual meeting with a person who is an expert in HTML and XHTML, and we were discussing modifications to a work-related website. I could see his computer screen on my laptop. At a certain point he began writing new code to change the look of the page.

There, before my very eyes, I saw a person writing HTML as fluently and easily as I am writing English in this post. More than that, he was thinking in HTML, the way fluent translators can think in second and third languages. It rolled across the screen, all the tags and colons and semicolons and quotation marks and styles, marching across the virtual page in perfect order and form. He clicked “publish” and voila! There was the web page, looking exactly how he had told it to look.

It was a beautiful thing to see (OK, beautiful to me). To watch someone do so easily and so effortlessly what I had struggled with so mightily was both amazing and humbling.

Bottom line: I have a whole new appreciation for the people who do web design and creation. A huge appreciation. I learned my limitations. I learned that not every rebooting enterprise is a good idea. In truth, I can’t do everything.

Some things are better left to the experts. And HTML and XHTML are two of them!

He became his better self

2009-09-04T07:17:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday Ted Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Reflecting on his life and the triumph and tragedy of the Kennedy family, Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times, “The Kennedys counseled us for half a century to be optimistic and to strive harder, to find the resilience to overcome those inevitable moments of tragedy and desolation, and to move steadily toward our better selves, as individuals and as a nation.”

It occurs to me that Ted Kennedy was a rebooter of heroic proportions. From that tragic accident at Chappaquiddick, to that day when he stumbled over the question, “Why do you want to be president?” to the final years of his life, when he was revered as a consummate lawmaker who authored or co-authored many landmark pieces of legislation – he remade himself.

He picked himself up by his bootstraps and became “his better self.”

So many of us these days are at a point in our lives where a rebooting is necessary. It may be that we need to reinvent ourselves for economic reasons, for retirement-building reasons, or for personal reasons that go deep into our spirit. There is a time and a season for everything. This is a time and season for rebooting.

Funemployment is here

2009-06-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

There’s a new term to add to the lexicon of the current recession: funemployment.

An article in the Los Angeles Times describes the new state:

“While millions of Americans struggle to find work as they face foreclosures and bankruptcy, others have found a silver lining in the economic meltdown,” says the article by Kimi Yoshino. “These happily jobless tend to be single and in their 20s and 30s. Some were laid off. Some quit voluntarily, lured by generous bailouts.”

The “funemployed” do not spend their time studying job listings. Instead, “they travel on the cheap for weeks. They head back to school or volunteer at the neighborhood soup kitchen. And at least until the bank account dries up, they’re content living for today.”

The Urban Dictionary’s definition of funemployment: “The condition of a person who takes advantage of being out of a job to have the time of their life.”

“‘Recession gives people permission to be unemployed,’ said David Logan, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. ‘Why not make use of the time and go do something fun?’”

If you’re in your 50s, losing your job may not exactly be funemployment.

But there’s no rule that says you can’t take time off to recharge your batteries and have some fun before rebooting yourself. When I “retired,” I took a year off before starting back to work and had a fabulous time. It was the sabbatical I never took earlier in my career, and it thoroughly refreshed me. It gave me time to think long and hard about rebooting, and when I did decide to go back to work, I did so with confidence and enthusiasm.

I’ve often heard it said of work, “If it ain’t fun, you ain’t doing it right.” Some people are proving the same can be said of non-work.

Everywhere you look -- reinvention

2009-06-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

Here’s a reinvention story inside another reinvention story.

My Google alert for “reinvention” served up this headline from the Boston Business Journal:

“Job crunch: With unemployment rising, reinvention is a necessity in today’s economy.”

Sounded like just the kind of story I like to comment on. I read on. Here are the first four paragraphs:

Some 50 unemployed professionals gathered in a conference room at the ValleyWorks Career Center in Lawrence on a recent Monday afternoon. On tap was a presentation by two licensed social workers who started the session by asking those in the room to shout out their past job titles.

There was a banker, a grant manager, a computer programmer, a human resources specialist. “Now go back a few years and think about what you wanted to be as a child,” the social worker, Liz Maniscalco, said. The replies were far more adventurous, yet generic: artist, veterinarian, architect, nurse.

“Your attachment to your job attaches a lot to your personal worth,” Maniscalco said.

Most of the people in the room had recently been detached from their jobs — few, if any, by choice. The message from both the staff and jobless clients at ValleyWorks is that the thousands of workers laid-off due to the deeply troubled economy have a chance to craft new identities, to start over — whether they wanted to or not.

I thought, wow, this is a great technique for rebooting possibilities: comparing your last actual job to what you wanted to be when you were a child. If you’re thinking about rebooting and are unsure of a new direction, revisit your earlier passion.

I was warming to the story, when I came to these lines:

This article is for Paid Subscribers ONLY. If you are already a Boston Business Journal subscriber please create or sign into your bizjournals.com account to link your valid print subscription and have access to the complete article. Become a Subscriber to receive immediate access to this article and access to additional exclusive content every week.

There’s the other reinvention story – newspapers charging for online access. It’s one way the experts say that newspapers may be able to save themselves in a rapidly deteriorating industry.

As a serial rebooter, I’m hoping many of these folks – and millions of others who are in the same boat – can successfully reinvent themselves. And as an ex-newspaperman, I’m hoping that the daily print medium survives. That printer’s ink is still inside.

Complex, unconscious and emotional – moi?

2009-05-29T13:23:00.000-07:00

David Brooks nailed it today.

The New York Times op-ed columnist gave a perfect description of how people decide about rebooting:

“When noodling over some issue – whether it’s a legal case, an essay, a math problem or a marketing strategy, people go foraging about for a unifying solution…

“The mind tries on different solutions to see if they fit. Ideas and insights bubble up from some hidden layer of intuitions and heuristics. Sometimes you feel yourself getting closer to a conclusion, and sometimes you feel yourself getting farther away. The emotions serve as guidance signals, like from a GPS, as you feel your way toward a solution.

“Then – often while you’re in the shower or after a night’s sleep – the answer comes to you. You experience a fantastic rush of pleasure that feels like a million tiny magnets suddenly clicking into alignment.

“Now your conclusion is articulate in your consciousness. You can edit it or reject it. You can go out and find precedents and principles to buttress it. But the way you get there was not a cool, rational process. It was complex, unconscious and emotional.”

OK, Brooks was not talking about rebooting. He was talking about the decision-making process used by judges, wrestling with the reality that decisions, including judicial ones, “are made by imperfect minds in ambiguous circumstances.”

But from the rebooters I’ve talked to, and from my own experience, this is how the decision to reinvent oneself is usually made. At www.rebootyou.com we try to offer information and suggestions that appeal to your rational side, but we know that ultimately your decision will probably be based partly or mostly on your emotions.

So give them free rein. Your decision will be better for it.

Are we there yet?

2009-05-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

No, we’re not. We’re making progress, but “there” is still a ways off in the future.

The “there” I’m talking about is that re-invented, rebooted automotive future that runs on electricity and not on carbon dioxide-producing, smog-creating gasoline.

Case in point: The other day I saw a Tesla truck (Tesla the electric car company), towing a closed Tesla trailer big enough to carry a car inside. The truck was parked – at a Chevron station. Getting gas.

I assumed (rightly or wrongly, I don’t know) that inside the trailer was a spanking new Tesla, being delivered to someone environmentally savvy enough to buy an all-electric car, and rich enough to fork over $100,000 for it. And the delivery vehicle had to stop for gas. Old fashioned, petroleum-based, 91 octane gasoline.

Looking at the truck and trailer I thought, there’s a message here: that we have chosen a new direction, tentatively and on a small scale – electric cars -- and we’ve set out in that direction, but we have a long way to go. Tomorrow vs. today. Dream vs. reality.

Also: profound vs. superficial. You decide.

Genie-ology

2009-05-15T14:42:00.000-07:00

I’m here to speak on behalf of the genie.

What genie, you ask?

The one that everybody’s trying to put back in the bottle. Or more accurately, the one that everybody says can’t be put back in the bottle.

Well, of course not. He didn’t come out of a bottle in the first place. He came out of a lamp, for crying out loud. Give the guy a break!

Another thing: the genie that people want to put back in a bottle is usually something really bad or dangerous – nuclear power, for example, or global warming, or credit default swaps.

But Aladdin’s original genie was good – he would do anything you asked. How – or where – did the genie go bad?

These questions are bugging me. I’m thinking of genie because I keep hearing some policy wonk on NPR bemoaning the fact that he’s out of the bottle and can’t be put back in. If I had three wishes, one of them would be for people to get back to the lamp. Maybe that would work.

And where did the idea of “three wishes” come from? I’m guessing from mythology or a fairy tale, but whatever the source, it’s certainly well entrenched in our culture. We have Three Wishes the movie, Three Wishes the TV show, Three Wishes the book, even a catalog of three wishes cartoons and a genre of three wishes jokes.

A lot of people are looking for genies and three wishes to reinvent themselves these days. “Genie, reboot me as a gifted musician.” “I wish I had gone to law school.” “Reinvent me as a star NFL quarterback.” “I wish I had my 401(k) again.”

Not being granted such gifts, people are doing it the old fashioned way, one step at a time. It’s not magic, but it gets the job done.

So I wish you well in your reinvention journey. Oops, I guess that was my second wish. Well, at least I put it to good use!

Beyond caffeine and No-Doz

2009-05-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

Cosmetic surgery for your brain?

Several months ago we blogged about neuroplasticity, the ability of the human brain to grow new cells. Today the subject is neuroenhancement, the use of drugs such as Adderall, Ritalin, Provagil and other so-called “smart drugs” to improve brain functions.

In a long and fascinating article in the April 27 issue of The New Yorker, Margaret Talbot wrote that more and more college students are taking neuroenhancing drugs to become higher-functioning for exams, writing papers and doing research. They are often getting them from friends with prescriptions.

This “off label” use of stimulants for nonmedical purposes was reported in various studies to have been practiced by 4.1 percent of American undergraduates overall, as many as 25 percent at one school, and 35 percent at another. In addition, some graduates are using them after college to improve their performance on the job.

“If we eventually decide that neuroenhancers work, and are basically safe, will we one day enforce their use?” Talbot asks. “Lawmakers might compel certain workers – emergency room doctors, air-traffic controllers – to take them. (Indeed, the Air Force already makes modafinil [the generic name for Provagil] available to pilots for long flights.”

The question arises, would such drugs be useful, and safe, for staving off dementia and cognitive impairment in older people? The jury is still out – in fact, the jury has scarcely been seated. There haven’t been extensive studies of this possibility, and those that have been done are inconclusive, according to Talbot’s article.

What about the ethical aspects of neuroenhancer use? One user, a researcher at a defense-oriented think tank in northern Virginia, said, “We should have a fair degree of liberty to do with our bodies and minds as we see fit, so long as it doesn’t impinge on the basic rights, liberty and safety of others. Why would you want an upper limit on the intellectual capabilities of a human being? And, if you have a very nationalist viewpoint, why wouldn’t you want our country to have the advantage over other countries, particularly in what some people call a knowledge-based economy?”

Anjan Chatterjee, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania and a researcher specializing in the ethical implications of “smart drug” use, coined the term “cosmetic neurology” to describe the practice. He told Talbot he thinks it will eventually become as acceptable as cosmetic surgery.

“It makes no sense to ban the use of neuroenhancers,” Talbot writes. “Too many people are already taking them, and the users tend to be educated and privileged people who proceed with just enough caution to avoid getting into trouble… Neuroenhancers are perfectly suited for the anxiety of white-collar competition in a floundering economy. And they have a synergistic relationship with our multiplying digital technologies: the more gadgets we own, the more distracted we become, and the more we need help in order to focus.”

Today a lot of people – too many – need neuroenhancement help to focus not on the job, but on looking for a job.

A new national motto?

2009-04-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

“What were they thinking?”

It could be the new national motto, replacing E Pluribus Unum.

Brainless and stupid acts pop up on a regular and recurring basis.

• Pizza company employees videotape themselves doing despicable things to food, then upload the video to YouTube.

• The White House military office approves a photo opportunity project that sends a 747 and an Air Force jet fighter to circle around the Statue of Liberty, panicking thousands of people in New York and New Jersey.

• Bankers, hedge fund managers and financial “experts” spin up new financial “products” that are impossible to understand, sell them to people who can’t afford them, and create an avalanche of defaults that melts down the global economy.

• Tens of thousands of people and institutions entrust their savings, endowments and investments to Bernie Madoff, who runs a Ponzi scheme for 20-plus years, wipes out billions of dollars, and wrecks innumerable lives.

• Celebrities get arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, deny all charges, then enroll in anger management classes.

• Star athletes inject themselves with steroids, balloon up to twice their normal size, break records, then say, Who, me?

What are you thinking right now? If the recession has you recessed, or the depression has you depressed, what are you doing about it? Sitting around feeling sorry for yourself?

No, you’re not, because you’re reading this and you’re thinking about reinventing yourself into a new job, a new career, a new life! That’s really good!

You’re about to reboot into something new and exciting. And even more good news: Five, 10, 15 years from now, you won’t have to look back on yourself in the year 2009 and say, “What was I thinking?”

It’s time to reboot, America!

2009-04-26T20:06:00.000-07:00

I’m looking for people who have reinvented themselves. Or are in the process of doing so.

If you’re one of these people, I’m looking for you, because I’d like to tell your story on www.rebootyou.com, the website for personal reinvention.

There has never been a time when so many Americans needed to reinvent themselves, pick themselves up, dust themselves off and start all over again. President Obama said it in his inaugural address, and 100 days later the situation is even worse. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since the recession began in December 2007, 5.1 million jobs have been lost, with almost two-thirds (3.3 million) of the decrease occurring in the last 5 months. In March, the number of unemployed persons increased by 694,000 to 13.2 million. Job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors.

Here are the people I’m looking for, the rebooters, men and women who have:

• Gone back to school to learn new skills and better prepare yourself for a new job and or a new career.
• Started your own business – such as a restaurant, a manufacturing company, a software company, services, consulting, art, photography, crafts, – any new enterprise that you are creating from the chaos of our current economic mess.
• Changed jobs or careers voluntarily
• Changed jobs or careers after an involuntary separation, loss of job, downsizing, “early retirement” before you were ready, or other unexpected event
• Become a volunteer at a non-profit, a church or synagogue, a community organization, a school
• Signed up to serve in an organization like the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps

Your story is worth telling because you are taking charge of your life and taking care of yourself and your loved ones. Your story might well be an inspiration to others who are stymied, on the fence or undecided about what to do.

Drop me a line at leecallaway@rebootyou.com. I’ll get back in touch and together we’ll get your story written to your satisfaction.

It’s time to reboot, America!

I’d love to reboot, but…

2009-04-22T12:18:00.000-07:00

RebootYou.com received the following letter from a visitor to the site. With that person’s permission, I am reprinting it here because it seems to mirror the situation of so many people:

I would love to reinvent myself.

I have teaching degrees in English and Art but only taught HS English for a few months, quit to have my first child. I then was a stay at home Mom for 12 years raising 3 children.

When I went back to work I did it in the office arena. Not much fun there.

I love computers though, self taught everything I know on them, PC and Mac. Almost a geek!!

But the problem is money. How does one reboot without money? All the computer degrees, certificates or courses cost a lot.

My husband still works and although he barely makes enough to pay our bills, I do not qualify for any type of low-income training or scholarships.

So here I sit watching my life go by very rapidly without finding out what could have been.

My gut tells me that there are a lot of people today feeling the same way and experiencing the same kind of frustration. Here’s a summary of what I wrote in reply:

You know how to write. You are a self starter. You are a self-teacher and passionate about learning. You take initiative. Perhaps the most important attribute of all, you want to reinvent yourself.

I disagree that all courses cost a lot. I bet you could find some reasonably priced instruction at community colleges or community centers. Here are a couple of ideas to explore:

1. Go back to school – somewhere, anywhere.
2. Think about going back into teaching.
3. Look for writing jobs.
4. Start a blog.
5. Take time to dig through www.rebootyou.com more thoroughly. As I say on the home page, there's a lot of good stuff there, and something may inspire you.

Simple recommendations. Easy for me to say. Harder to do, especially in today’s real world. I hope they work for this potential rebooter. Maybe they will work for you, too.

Rebooting yourself may not be easy, but it’s not impossible, either. Wanting to do it is the first step. Doing it, though, is what counts.

Necessity – the mother of reinvention

2009-04-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

David Brooks, writing in the New York Times the other day, said that General Motors for 30 years has been not in the car business, but in the restructuring business.

“For all these years,” Brooks wrote, “GM’s market share has endured a long, steady slide. But this has not stopped the waves of restructuring. The PowerPoints have flowed and always there has been the promise that with just one more cost-cutting push, sustainability nirvana will be at hand.”

And yet the company’s latest restructuring plan, along with that of Chrysler, was rejected this week by the Obama Administration’s auto task force. GM was given a 60-day extension and Chrysler 30 days to make one try at restructuring on their own. The restructuring saga will continue, at least for a while.

Winston Churchill said famously, “Never was so much owed by so many to so few,” speaking of the RAF’s valiant efforts in the Battle of Britain. Today, with our manifold debts – including the national debt -- rising out of sight and the government printing money like it was going out of style, one might say, “Never have so many owed so much to so many.” And never have so many had such great need to restructure, reinvent and reboot themselves. We’re all in a mess, and we need to dig our way out of the biggest hole we’ve been in for decades.

The phrase, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” means that “a need or problem encourages creative efforts to meet the need or solve the problem.” If necessity is the mother of invention, surely it is also the mother of reinvention. And we’ve got about all the necessity we need right now.

Thinking in metaphors

2009-03-24T08:52:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, as I was waiting for a traffic light to change near a freeway intersection, a huge truck slowly came down an exit ramp with a trailer full of flattened and crushed automobiles.

The thought occurred to me: there goes the U.S. automobile industry, maybe the whole world’s automobile industry. Smashed flat by a perfect storm of devastating forces – bloated gasoline prices, poor design choices, frozen credit, unmanaged labor and other costs, changing consumer tastes and a global economy in the tank

I was thinking in metaphors. My mind was ready for any symbol, any sign, any clue that would help me understand the fix we are all in. I saw a load of junk and it became in my mind the industry that had created it.

It was a bummer of a thought, and it stuck with me for a while. Then a ray of optimism crept in.

Those flattened cars were going to a processing plant somewhere to be further broken down into reusable basic materials, then recycled and made into something new. What had been at first a depressing thought became a positive one. It was EOL (end of life) for cars, and BONL (beginning of new life) for the materials in them.

Then another figure of speech came to mind, a simile: those cars are like all of us – people in my town and my state and my country who have been flattened and crushed by the global economic storm, but who are reinventing and rebooting themselves into something new.

President Obama said it in his inaugural address: It’s time for us to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get moving again. We are not worthless junk to be thrown away. We are valuable raw material with new possibilities and new purposes.

It’s time to reinvent.

Yes, Virginia, there is some good news

2009-03-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

The whole concept of RebootYou.com has been shaken badly by the economic downturn.

My original idea was that there were a lot of reasons to continue working beyond normal “retirement age” – the value of one’s contribution, the personal renewal factor, the waste of talent from a sedentary retirement.

The need to keep earning money was there, too, but it was a very minor reason.

Things have changed. A lot.

Millions have seen a huge chunk of their retirement savings vaporize. Millions have lost their jobs – well before “retirement.” Millions have lost their homes.

The number of available jobs for anyone – retirees or anyone else – has shrunk drastically. Far more people are competing for far fewer jobs.

Is there any good news anywhere?

The answer is “Yes.” These dire forces are stoking entrepreneurial ideas and energies.

The New York Times reports that “(many) laid-off workers across the country, burned out by a merciless job market, are building business plans instead of sending out résumés. For these people, recession has become the mother of invention.

“Economists say that when the economy takes a dive, it is common for people to turn to their inner entrepreneur to try to make their own work. But they say that it takes months for that mentality to sink in, and that this is about the time in the economic cycle when it really starts to happen — when the formerly employed realize that traditional job searches are not working, and that they are running out of time and money.”

This wave of downturn start-ups is different from those in the past, said the Times. The biggest difference is that “the Internet has given people an extraordinary tool not just to market their ideas but also to find business partners and suppliers, and to do all kinds of functions on the cheap: keeping the books, interacting with customers, even turning a small idea into a big idea.”

I’m betting that you can turn your small idea into a big one. Give it a try!

Coping with forced rebooting

2009-02-11T08:49:00.000-08:00

A story by Reuters last week described the sad stories of several seniors who have been forced to go back to work because they lost their savings in Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme:

• A 90-year-old California man working in a grocery store to make ends meet.

• A 60-year-old Pennsylvania widow giving up her retirement to work as a house cleaner.

• A 73-year-old Florida man looking for a part time job after being financially devastated.

This is not the kind of rebooting I had in mind when I started RebootYou.com. And unfortunately, these are just three of many who are looking at a forced rebooting. Countless others have also lost money because of the economy’s collapse and need to go back to work to pay their bills.

Adding to the pain, millions more are now unemployed than a few years ago making it more difficult, if not impossible, to find that “rebooting” job: too many people on the job market competing for a shrinking number of positions.

What’s a person to do?

Well, I believe the same strategies for reinvention apply, whether the rebooting is voluntary or involuntary. Here are some ideas:

• Be willing so start over, maybe at or near the bottom. Don’t let pride stand in your way.

• Start a business in some line of activity that you love. It will be a small business to start, but a well-thought-out small business can make money – maybe just enough to make a difference.

• Go back to school. Don’t we all need to “go back to school” to learn how to cope in hard times? Going back to school to learn a new skill or brush up on an old one is a healthy and usually productive way to manage a setback.

• Volunteer at a church or non-profit. You may not make money, but you will gain a psychic satisfaction that will be emotionally rewarding and get your mind off your woes.

• Become a teacher or mentor for young people in need.

• Join the Experience Corps (see http://www.experiencecorps.org/index.cfm)

• Do “good work” and get paid for it (see http://www.encore.org/)

OK, not easy. I agree. But as the old saying goes, nobody said this was going to be easy. The most important requirement for rebooting is simple — the desire to do so. The second most important requirement is belief in yourself — confidence that you can do it. Just remember: What you want to do, and believe you can do, you can do.

Dept. of Shameless Self-Promotion

2009-02-08T21:55:00.001-08:00

I'm pleased to report that the latest issue of Stanford Business, a quarterly magazine for alumni and alumnae of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, carries a short item on our website, www.rebootyou.com. Here's the item:

Trail Guide for Career Changers

After rebooting professionally a number of times, Lee Callaway, Sloan '77, repotted himself once again as an online resource for people -- some retired, some not -- who want to change their lives and take off in new, meaningful directions. Callaway's new venture for new venturers is a website called RebootYou.com, which both inspires and informs. It features stories about people who have successfully changed course, suggestions for volunteer and career opportunities, and a list of books, web links, seminars, and more, all designed to guide the rebooter-to-be.

A thank-you tip of the rebooter hat to Kathleen O'Toole, Stanford Business editor!

Time to Reboot America

2008-12-24T21:20:00.000-08:00

Thomas Friedman, the highly respected New York Times columnist and author of numerous best selling books, has a great column today, Christmas Eve. The headline:

Time to Reboot America

He makes a strong case – so strong, so urgent, I want to quote liberally from it:

“We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

“To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

“For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.

“That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.”

Friedman is not the only national figure calling for rebooting America. Almost every day someone in government or business or society at large is calling for the reinvention of our country, or some huge part of it, on a scale not seen in decades, maybe ever.

For such a rebooting to happen, I think we need much more than government bailouts and stimulus packages. We need for people by the thousands and millions, at every age and in every walk of life, to face up to and overcome the hard times by rebooting themselves and their organizations – their governments, schools, companies, churches, civic and charitable organizations.

Remember that the term “rebooting” and its counterpart “booting” were adapted for computer talk from “pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps.” It is time for some major pulling up on our own bootstraps. We collectively got ourselves into this mess. We collectively need to get ourselves out of it.

It is the challenge and the opportunity of our lifetimes.

Bring back the wooly retiree

2008-12-05T09:46:00.000-08:00

Scientists are talking – seriously, it seems – about the possibility of regenerating a wooly mammoth, a furry elephant-like mammal that went extinct toward the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. With the mammoth’s genome now decoded and DNA available, the experts say it could be done for about $10 million.

By today’s standards, when “trillion” is the new “billion,” that sounds pretty cheap. But we think it would be a better idea, and much less expensive, to bring back some wooly retirees.

We’re talking about bringing them back into the active, productive, vibrant life of the rebooter. Out of the TV room, out of the lounge chair, on their feet, doing things, and back into the mainstream.

Now of course, retirees haven’t become extinct, but going into a passive, do-nothing retirement bears some similarity to going extinct, doesn’t it? Withdrawing from the active life, shutting down the inner computer and basically checking out of life accomplishes about the same thing as disappearing.

Maybe we should start considering the passive retiree as a missing person. Perhaps not physically missing, but mentally and emotionally and psychologically missing.

Rebooting offers a healthy alternative to retirement “extinction.” Continuing to work, volunteering, going back to school, teaching, consulting, turning that lifelong hobby into a business – all are ways to recharge the batteries and bring oneself back into life on earth.

And the really good news: no danger of a retiree Jurassic Park!

Rebooting: an idea whose time is still here!

2008-11-21T15:08:00.000-08:00

RebootYou.com started up a year ago in September. Back then, the economy was fairly healthy and optimism was strong. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 13,820 on September 21, 2007, on its way to 14,164 in October. The Consumer Confidence Index was in the 80s, on its way to the 90s.

It seemed like a good time to launch a website dedicated to the proposition of reinvention, restarting, and rebooting – especially after “retirement” from a conventional career.

Now the Dow is barely above 8,000 and the consumer confidence index is at 38, its lowest point since it was first devised in 1967.

Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October. Job losses over the last 3 months totaled 651,000. In October, the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent, and the number of unemployed persons increased to 10.1 million.

Many retirees have seen much of their savings wiped out. People are still talking about rebooting, but now it’s about rebooting the whole country – or at least the whole economy.

So is one of the basic ideas of rebooting – continuing to work after retirement – out the window? Is reinvention no longer an option? Are so many people out of work and the economy so far in the tank that there simply aren’t any jobs for people looking to start anew?

I think not.

Maybe the possibility of staying on the job, or finding a new job, is off the table. But there are many other ways to reboot, and now is the time to explore them. Here are a few ideas from RebootYou.com (http://www.rebootyou.com/how_to_reboot.html).

• Start your own business – maybe consulting in your field of expertise, or some other field. In her book, Starting Over: Reinventing Life After 60, author Pat Skilling Kellerman tells story after story of people over 60 who have turned their interests into businesses, including pottery, woodworking, cooking, selling wallpaper, owning and operating a bed and breakfast, song writing and farming, among others. You may not grow “too big to fail,” but you may do very well, as have many of the people in Ms. Kellerman’s book.
• Volunteer at a church or local non-profit. There are scores of organizations that need willing, capable and experienced volunteers in virtually every area -- financial, marketing, fund-raising, general management, hands-on work, you name it.
• Go back to school.
• Become a teacher.
• Join the Experience Corps. Go to http://www.experiencecorps.org/index.cfm
• Join the Peace Corps. (http://www.peacecorps.gov/)
• Pursue a paid Encore Career, as championed by Marc Freedman, Encore.Org (http://www.encore.org/) and Civic Ventures (http://www.civicventures.org/)
• Volunteer elsewhere and do good work. Go to the website http://www.networkforgood.org/ and you’ll find thousands of opportunities, and even if none of them are in your area, maybe you’ll get some good ideas there.

Yes, even with so many gloomy signs and downward-pointing arrows, there are still opportunities for personal reinvention. Despite the dark clouds, there are rays of hope and optimism. At the upper levels of government, on the Obama transition team, in Congress, among the scholars and pundits and commentators, there is talk of rebooting – rebooting the economy and, indeed, the whole country.

In hard times, Americans have always risen to the occasion. We will do so this time, too.~

Knocked down by the financial hurricane? Get up and reboot!

2008-10-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

The financial crisis that toppled major Wall Street banks and snarled credit markets around the world has also taken a toll on nest eggs, forcing people to rethink when - and even if - their savings will allow them to retire.

More than half of people surveyed in an Associated Press-GfK poll released Wednesday said they worry that they will have to work longer because the value of their retirement savings has declined.

Associated Press, Oct. 1, 2008

Talk about an inconvenient truth. I know the feeling. I watched the monster eat a giant hole in my IRA in September.

There is unanimous agreement that we have a crisis on our hands. And even though linguists and scholars have debunked the popular notion that the Chinese word for crisis (weiji) incorporates the words for both “danger” and “opportunity,” thinking Americans have to be hoping they can find the opportunity in this danger.

So where’s the opportunity in our current crisis? I believe it is in rethinking the old notion of “retirement” as a period of rest and relaxation, and instead deciding that this is the time to reboot oneself into period of extended productive contribution.

It might be continuing in the same line of work, starting a new business, consulting, or taking up an “encore career” in a socially meaningful (and paid) role in such fields as education, health care or community work.

RebootYou.com has been promoting the idea of working beyond the so-called “normal retirement years” for reasons other than financial emergency. But a financial emergency definitely gets your attention. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, “Nothing focuses the mind like losing your life savings.”

Fifty-five percent of people surveyed for the AP-GfK poll said they were worried that the financial crisis would reduce their savings and force them to postpone retirement. The poll, conducted Sept. 27-30, was based on phone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,160 adults. It had a margin of error of 2.9 percent.

In a previous blog (July 31, 2008) I wrote about the new book, Working Longer: The Solution to the Retirement Income Challenge. The premise of that book is that even without a financial crisis, many people will have to work longer than they thought they would just to maintain their standard of living. With a crisis, the number is undoubtedly larger.

RebootYou.com can help. I invite you to click over to the site (http://www.rebootyou.com/) and check out the possibilities. There are dozens and dozens of ways to reinvent yourself. And if you’ve already done it, tell us your story so we can share it with others. Look for the heading, “Submit your story” for the easy steps to follow.

Staying Healthy and Vigorous All Your Life

2008-08-29T22:55:00.000-07:00

The headline on the story in the August 26 New York Times says it all: “Living Longer, in Good Health to the End.”

Isn’t that the way we all want it to be?

I think so. This article, by Jane E. Brody in the Times’ Personal Health column, is one of many I’ve seen lately offering encouragement that the final years of life don’t have to be a prolonged period of discomfort, distress and suffering.

“There is increasing evidence that the societal burden of increased longevity need not be so drastic,” says the article. “Long-term studies have shown that how people live accounts for more than half the difference in how hale and hearty they will remain until very near the end.”

Dr. James E. Fries of Stanford University in 1980 put forth the idea that good health and vigor can be extended well into a person’s 80s, and illness and disability can be compressed into a short period at the end of life.

Many studies have come to a consensus conclusion that genetic factors – such as the amount and proportion of HDL and LDL cholesterol in the blood – account for only about 35 percent of the length of a person’s life. The rest – roughly 65 percent – is determined by environmental factors.

It’s never too late to adopt habits that predict a healthy old age, according to Dr. Richard S. Rivlin, an internist and director of the nutrition and cancer prevention career development program at Weill Cornell College.

“While measures started early in life are most likely to have the greatest health benefit, older people should never feel that turning over a new leaf at their age is anything but highly effective,” he is quoted in Brody’s article.

He said people in their 70s can do a number of things to help prevent hypertension, heart disease, osteoporosis and even cancer. These include restricting calorie intake, limiting saturated fats, replacing simple sugars with fiber-rich whole grains, and eating plenty of high quality protein.

Another very important measure that people in their 70s can take to stay healthy is to make exercise a regular part of their daily lifestyle, including aerobic activities that elevate the heart rate, weight-bearing activities that strengthen muscles and bones, and stretching exercises that reduce stiffness and improve flexibility and balance.

Many long-term studies have pinpointed exercise as the single most potent predictor of healthy longevity, in women as well as men, Brody writes. She concludes: “It’s not that very old people… can exercise because they are healthy, these findings indicate. Rather, they achieve a healthy old age because the exercise.”

What top scientists are learning about memory

2008-08-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

For anyone worried about memory loss, here is a book with the greatest title ever: Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research (Harmony Books, Crown Publishing Group, Random House, 2008) by Sue Halpern.

Halpern’s book is a report on the current state of scientific and medical knowledge about possible preventatives or treatment for Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Capturing the subtitle of her book, here is her summary of the state of good news (as of the time she wrote the book):

• The sorLA gene had been discovered, enabling scientists to use a whole new way to explain what was going on in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.
• Thanks to a new imaging technique, amyloid plaques could now be seen in a living brain.
• There was a growing open-source Alzheimer’s gene bank.
• Preliminary data from a Mayo Clinic-University of Southern California study of the Posit Science program had shown that people who completed the training had significant improvements in auditory memory.
• Biomarkers in the blood and cerebral spinal fluid could show Alzheimer’s nearly a decade before there are symptoms.
• Exercise had been shown to cause new brain cells to grow in old brains. That process, neurogenesis, had been shown to improve memory.
• A diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) was not necessarily a “sentence to die from Alzheimer’s.”
• Memory loss in older people was normal.
• The first neural prosthesis, an artificial hippocampus, was close to being tested in living animals.
• The first round of immunizations for Alzheimer’s disease had been completed, no one had gotten sick, and the method of delivery had worked.
• The majority of researchers were working from discoveries that the sticky plaques that had defined Alzheimer’s for years were not the “bad guys,” but that the bad guy was soluble beta-amyloid, which Alzheimer’s patients had in toxic excess. “And while no one yet knew why that was,” she wrote, “the retromer theory put forth by Scott Small and his associates offered a plausible explanation.”

The not-so-good news, at least for me, is what Halpern was finally told after asking many scientists if working crossword puzzles helps stave off dementia or Alzheimer’s.

“You know what crossword puzzles are really good for?” said Dr. Michael Merzenich, professor of integrative neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco, and developer of a computer-based program for children with language-based learning disabilities. “Doing crosswords are really good for… doing crosswords. Do the puzzle every day and you’ll get pretty good at it.”

Unfortunately, Dr. Merzenich concluded, crossword puzzles don’t do anything for memory.

What? You mean remembering that “adit” means “mine opening” doesn’t mean I have a great memory? Rats!

Working longer: A solution for more people in the future

2008-07-31T14:08:00.000-07:00

A major premise of RebootYou.com is that it makes sense to stay active after “retirement.” There are many reasons – physical and mental health, economics, and preventing the waste of experience and knowledge, among others.

In fact, we believe that “retirement” in the conventional sense – withdrawing to a passive, unengaged existence – is a bad thing.

One of the reasons for continuing to work described on www.rebootyou.com is the need or desire to continue to make money – other than Social Security or a pension.

Now along comes a book whose main message is that many people will have to work longer than they thought they would, just to maintain their standard of living.

The book is Working Longer: The Solution to the Retirement Income Challenge, by Alicia H. Munnell and Steven A Sass (Brookings Institution Press.)

The book was reviewed recently by Harry Hurt III in the New York Times. Munnell and Sass “note that the nation’s retirement system, as embodied by Social Security and Medicare in the public sector and I.R.A.’s and 401(k) plans in the private sector, is contracting in its ability to replace workers’ lost income – even as life expectancy is increasing,” Hurt writes.

I think this book is most likely to be a very important contribution to the conversation about retiring/not retiring, encore careers, reinvention and rebooting. I plan to say more about it in future blogs.

“About 19 percent of men and 33 percent of women who survive to age 65 will live to age 90 or older and have to support themselves for almost 30 years,” Munnell and Sass write. “The arithmetic does not work.”

The authors cite numerous studies that turn up these very inconvenient truths:

• For people who retire at 65 today, it is estimated that Social Security will only provide the equivalent of 39 percent of their incomes after deductions for basic Medicare contributions.
• Those who plan to retire in 2030 can expect net benefits of only 30 percent of their incomes.
• In 1989, 66 percent of American employers provided post-retirement health care benefit programs. By 2006 that number had fallen to 35 percent.
• Americans do not save enough. In a 2004 Federal Reserve study, the theoretically possible or simulated amount of money owned by people aged 55 to 64 was $314,000. However, the actual average savings was only $60,000.

Munnell and Sass recommend that people postpone their retirements from the current average age of 63 to age 66. Four more years of work changes the ratio of retirement to working years from 1 to 2, meaning 20 years of retirement and 40 years of work, to almost 1 to 3, or 16 years of retirement and 44 years of work.

Working longer, the authors say, would delay the need for people to tap into their I.R.A.’s and 401(k)’s, increasing their total assets and the future income they can produce. It would also maximize the benefits of Social Security, which are about one-third higher for recipients who are 66 than for those who are 62.

The authors raise other important issues, which we will discuss in subsequent blogs: whether older workers will be healthy enough to continue to work, whether they will want to, and whether employers will be willing to employ them.

If you’re interested in ordering the book, please click here click here. The link will take you to the resources section of RebootYou.com, and Working Longer is the first book listed.

Early Retirees in New Ventures, Mostly for Fun

2008-07-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

A recent article in the New York Times described a new breed of entrepreneur rebooters now coming on the business scene.

“Not the hard-driving type who makes the business news pages,” the Times reported in an article by Brent Bowers. “Rather, the laid-back, come-what-may variety. Many of them are part of the first wave of America’s 76 million baby boomers who are taking early retirement and turning their hobbies into small businesses. Very small businesses.”

The Times said the new entrepreneurs see their microbusinesses as a way to give focus to a favorite pastime, get more zest out of life and make a little money. The best part is they do not care if the ventures fail.

Ty Freyvogel, a small-business consultant and investor in Pittsburgh, predicts that the ranks of early retirement dabblers will swell as they discover they have too much time and not quite enough money. “If they do the proper research and can get started without putting a significant amount of capital behind them initially, these types of small start-ups can get going with little risk,” he said.

Three of these entrepreneurial rebooters were described in Bowers’ article.

Carl Boast, owner of Peaceable Kingdom Photos in Moneta, Va., quit his job as a neuroscientist in the pharmaceutical industry five years ago at age 55 and became a nature photographer.

He says he is too busy hiking, boating, reading, writing songs and traveling to fit the definition of an entrepreneur. “I’ve put very little effort into marketing,” he said. “I’m not out to make money or change the world.” He has created a Web site, he says, but it is “buried in Earthlink somewhere” and is out of date.

He makes a few hundred dollars a year, but it's not about the money. What really motivates him, he said, is “sharing my pictures to convey the idea, ‘Wasn’t this a neat moment?’”

Jan Oudemool of Harwich, Mass., 65, retired five years ago from a job as a special-education teacher and not long after began making decorative mobiles in his home.

Last year, he sold about 35 for close to $4,000, more than double the revenue of the previous year, his first in business. He’s pleased with the growth – not so much for the money as for getting his creations out of his house so they won’t clutter up his basement.

He has a Web site, business cards and a niche market. But he says he knows next to nothing about business, did no research or planning for his company and does not want it to grow.

Bowers, the author of the article, has also recently started a business. Formerly a New York Times editor, he took early retirement two years ago and opened a business writing freelance articles and giving occasional speeches.

“I do not know a whole lot more about the mechanics of running a business than Mr. Boast or Mr. Oudemool,” wrote Bowers. “But I guess I’m a quasi-entrepreneur like them. I’m doing this for the fun, not the money. I love being (mostly) my own boss and I am even tempted by the delusion that I may make it big some day.”

Exercise: the spark for your brain

2008-06-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

Does exercise benefit your brain?

You bet it does, and if you want to know the many ways it does, get this book: Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, by Dr. John J. Ratey with Eric Hagerman.

“We all know that exercise makes us feel better, but most of us have no idea why,” Ratey writes. “We assume it’s because we’re burning off stress or reducing muscle tension or boosting endorphins, and we leave it at that. But the real reason we feel so good when we get our blood pumping is that it makes the brain function at its best, and in my view, this benefit of physical activity is far more important – and fascinating – than what it does for the body.

“Building muscles and conditioning the heart and lungs are essentially side effects. I often tell my patients that the point of exercise is to build and condition the brain.”

Ratey is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He has put together an wonderfully fascinating account of what goes on inside your head when you exercise.

Ratey describes these almost unbelievable chemical and neurological processes in terms that a lay person can understand. And they make a convincing case that “… you have the power to change your brain. All you have to do is lace up your running shoes.”

For me the most interesting chapter of all was the one on aging. Ratey lists nine ways that exercise keeps you going:

1. It strengthens the cardiovascular system.
2. It regulates fuel (glucose).
3. It reduces obesity.
4. It elevates your stress threshold.
5. It lifts your mood.
6. It boosts the immune system.
7. It fortifies your bones.
8. It boosts motivation.
9. It fosters neuroplasticity (keeps your brain growing).

Considering a list like that, why would anyone let laziness keep them from exercising?

Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Rebooter

2008-05-17T14:53:00.000-07:00

This cartoon by Mort Greenberg, which appeared in the New Yorker, then in a Fidelity Investments print ad in the New Yorker, and most recently in Last Laughs: Cartoons about Aging, Retirement… and the Great Beyond (Scribner, 2007) perfectly captures the ideal of rebooting – Leonardo da Vinci, the ultimate Renaissance man, in his studio, busy working on two things at once.

The housekeeper is saying to the visitor, “Oh you know with Leonardo, it’s never retirement, it’s always reinvention.”

The cartoon brings back fond memories of a visit I made some years ago to the Clos Luce manor house in Amboise, in the Loire Valley of France. This is where Leonardo, at the invitation of King Francois I, came to live when he was 65. He happily continued to paint, sketch, and work as an engineer, architect, and festival organizer for the King Francois I court in Amboise, spending the last three years of his life there. The manor house is now a Leonardo museum.

I was traveling with a group of Stanford Sloan classmates, including Mike Fitch, a highly regarded Wells Fargo banker with a well-tuned and mischievous sense of humor. As Mike and I were walking through the models and drawings, we got into some nonsense banter about how Leonardo might have interacted with “Jacques,” an imaginary person who might have been hanging around Leonardo’s workshop (perhaps the guy in the cartoon).

Jacques: “Hey Lennie! Whatcha doin’ today?”

Leonardo: “I’m inventing a helicopter.”

Jacques: “Oh.”

(Pause.)

Jacques: “Hey Lennie! What’s a helicopter?”

Leonardo: “It’s something to fly around in and report on traffic.

Jacques: “Oh.”

(Longer pause.)

Jacques: “Hey Lennie! What’s traffic?”

OK, you had to be there. There was much more. Too bad one of our classmates didn’t have a video camera. Our improv routine might have made it to YouTube.

"A well filled day gives a good sleep. A well filled life gives a peaceful death." -- Leonardo da Vinci

Doing Good Work and Getting Paid to Do It

2008-05-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

Between working at a for-profit business for a salary and working at a non-profit organization as a volunteer, there’s another path for rebooters: Doing “good work” and getting paid for it.

That is, starting a new career by taking on a salaried position in an organization devoted to some higher social good, such as health care, education and social services.

Marc Freedman, co-founder of Civic Ventures, author and one of the nation's leading thinkers and writers on the opportunities presented by the aging of America, documents this growing trend in Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life. He calls it one of the most significant developments of the new century, and the biggest change in the American workforce since the women’s movement.

“Millions of boomers are headed not for an endless vacation but for a new stage of work, driven both by the desire to remain productive and the need to make ends meet over longer life spans,” he says.

"Boomers can capitalize on longer working lives to go beyond their own narrow needs, get down to some of their most significant work and leave the world a better place than they found it.”

Civic Ventures (www.civicventures.org) and its affiliate Encore.org (www.encore.org) are dedicated to helping people make such transitions to “encore careers,” working both online and offline. On the Web, Encore.org members share their stories, their ideas and their challenges. On the ground, the Encore.org community includes nonprofits, companies, colleges and other organizations that help people explore, prepare and launch their encore careers.

While RebootYou.com has no official affiliation with Civic Ventures and Encore.org, we are proud to share objectives with them and help further this valuable, vital and much needed trend.

RebootYou.com featured in SF Chronicle Sunday Magazine

2008-05-11T22:26:00.000-07:00

With your permission, a bit of self-promotion.

Today’s San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Magazine (May 11, 2008) has an article about how I came up with the idea of RebootYou.com. Here’s the link:

http://www.sf gate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/09/CMUMV9Q8G.DTL

I would be pleased if you would take the time to peruse the article. I’m gratified that the folks at the Chronicle consider RebootYou.com a “bright idea,” and I hope you do, too.

The next big thing: Neuroplastics

2008-05-03T08:32:00.000-07:00

You remember the line in “The Graduate” when a friend of Dustin Hoffman’s parents pulled him aside and revealed the next big thing: “Plastics.”

Well, the next big thing today may be: “Neuroplastics.” This is the field of medicine that explores the ability of the brain to improve itself through activity or mental exercise.

“The idea that the brain can change its own structure and function through thought and activity is, I believe, the most important alteration in our view of the brain since we first sketched out its anatomy and the workings of its basic component, the neuron,” writes Dr. Norman Doidge in his book, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science..

“The neuroplastic revolution has implications for, among other things, our understanding of how love, sex, grief, relationships, learning, addictions, culture, technology and psychotherapies change our brains,” Dr. Doidge writes.

Today’s New York Times has a related story: “Exercise Your Brain or Else You’ll … Uh…” The lead actor in the story: ELDR magazine editor David Bunnell, who recounts his techniques for maintaining the acuity of his own brain.

“Mr. Bunnell now does regular brain calisthenics, largely avoiding expensive software in favor of simpler solutions,” says the Times article. “He works at memorizing the numbers that swirl around his daily life – credit cards, PINs and phone numbers – and devises mnemonics for remembering people’s names. ‘Smart people find new ways to exercise their brains that don’t involve buying software or taking expensive workshops,’ he said.”

A growing industry is turning out brain health products – both dietary supplements and computer-based products such as math and memory exercises, cognitive assessment and training and other “neurosoftware” programs.

My favorite brain exercises are crossword puzzles and the “Scramble” word game. I’ve tackled sodoku but so far with little success. But I haven’t given up yet.

Now where did I put this morning’s puzzle page?

Now here is a rebooter for the books: Jason Poole

2008-05-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

In November I wrote a blog that started like this:

Are you hesitating to reboot yourself because you’re afraid you might have lost your edge, let your skills go stale, or become unable to do what you used to do?This happens sometimes. Self doubt creeps in like an unwelcome visitor, displacing self confidence. You’d go out and really do something new and exciting, but … you are worried that you don’t have what it takes any more.

Well, I just met a guy who suddenly became unable to do what he used to do. Only we’re not talking about playing sports or managing complex projects or creating works of art. We’re talking about the basics:

• Speaking
• Walking
• Reading
• Functioning in society

This is a reinvention story that will amaze you, inspire you and get you to think about the rebooting process differently. It’s Jason Poole’s story, and it’s posted on RebootYou.com at [link]

Jason, a corporal in the U.S. Marines, was severely wounded by an improvised explosive device while on patrol in Iraq. Half his face was blown away and he suffered severe brain damage. He was unconscious for two months. When he awoke he was blind in his left eye, deaf in his left ear and unable to control the muscles on the right side of his body.

But four years later, thanks to superb medical treatment and extraordinary physical, neurophysical and speech therapy, he has made a recovery that borders on the miraculous.

He continues his recovery today, literally reinventing himself from the ground up. He has had to learn how to talk, read, walk and think all over again. He is providing inspiration to fellow veterans, friends, doctors and therapists, and anyone who comes in contact with him.

And here’s the truly amazing part of the story: Jason is the most positive, optimistic, hopeful and sunny person you’d ever expect to meet. Please read his story at [link].

When I started RebootYou.com, I was thinking it would be mainly about rebooting at “retirement age.” Most of the articles and resources on the site are in fact keyed to people who are reinventing themselves relatively late in life.

But web expert and RebootYou collaborator Hugo Evans, who does a lot of behind the scenes work on the site, suggested that I seek rebooting stories of people at earlier stages in life. “What about an Iraq veteran?” Hugo said. “Some of them probably have great stories to tell.”

That turned out to be a terrific idea. I contacted the Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital in Palo Alto, a few miles from where I live, and through the help of VA spokesperson Kerri Childress, was introduced to Jason Poole. Meeting him and talking to him was an inspirational experience I’ll never forget.

And yes, I am definitely expanding the scope of RebootYou.com to include inspiring stories about reinvention at any age. You’ll be seeing more in the future.

Retirement: time to do what you haven’t done yet

2008-04-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Older Americans are generally happy and more socially active than the stereotype of the lonely senior.

That’s the key finding of a massive study done over 26 years by University of Chicago sociologist Yang Yang.

The study, based on periodic face-to-face interviews with 28,000 people from 1972 to 2004, found that older Americans have learned to be more content with what they have than younger adults, Yang said. His study was published in the April issue of American Sociological Review.

However, get ready for the next group of people about to become “older Americans:” the baby boomers. According to the study, baby boomers are the least happy.

Linda George, Duke University aging expert, said that while older people have learned to lower their expectations and accept their achievements, baby boomers aren’t lowering their aspirations at the same rate earlier generations did.

“They still seem to believe that they should have it all,” George said in a New York Times article about Yang’s study. “They’re still thinking about having a retirement that’s going to let them do everything they haven’t done yet.”

My translation: the boomers are going to be rebooters!

Many boomers not planning “traditional” retirement

2008-04-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

Baby Boomers seem unwilling to give up work and follow a “traditional” definition of retirement.

In a survey commissioned by Bell Investment Advisors, an Oakland, California-based wealth management firm, 26% of Boomers reaching 60 in 2007 said retirement means "pursuing personal interests and passions without regard to making money, such as charitable work."

Another 20% said their definition of retirement is “nothing changes, I hope to work as long as I am able to.”

Boomers who believe they have enough assets to retire comfortably are most likely to say they will pursue their personal interests and passions, while those who believe they don't have enough to retire or retire comfortably will work as long as possible, the survey said.

To explore out what affluent Baby Boomers are thinking and doing about retirement as they reach this milestone birthday, Bell Investment Advisors commissioned the Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) to survey Boomers turning 60 in 2007. ORC conducted a telephone survey of 500 men and women born in 1947 with investment assets of $1 million or more. The survey consisted of 17 questions to assess attitudes and determine financial preparedness.

Bell Investment Advisors provides personalized financial planning, investment management and career planning services. http://www.bellinvest.com/index.html

Wanted: Math, Science and Engineering Professionals

2008-04-15T16:12:00.000-07:00

I'm departing from the usual practice to bring you this message, which came in an e-mail today from AARP California. I think it's self-explanatory.

* * *

Rewire, Don't Retire!

AARP is proud to alert you to a unique opportunity for retiring or retired math, science and engineering professionals - the opportunity to share your passion for math or science as a California public school teacher. The EnCorps Teachers Program, launched by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2007, is collaborating with AARP and California employers to recruit professionals as math or science teachers in fall 2008.

Through a selective application process, highly qualified retiring or retired employees of participating EnCorps Corporations, inlcuding Bank of America, IBM, Qualcomm, Northrop Grumman, Intel and others will be chosen to teach in California classrooms. To support AARP's members, EnCorps is hosting online information sessions on Thursdays at 12pm PT.

Please RSVP to info@encorpsteachers.org mail to:info@encorpsteachers.org to receive sign on information.
This is an aggressive timeline and an exciting opportunity.

Next Application Deadline: April 18, 2008
Final Application Deadline: May 9, 2008

How do I find out more? Go to www.encorpsteachers.org to see if your current or former corporation is participating

Sign up for the next web-based information session

Apply now!

Personal Trainer links now posted

2008-04-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

Back in February I promised to add to the Resources section of www.rebootyou.com information that will help you find a qualified personal trainer.

It took me longer than I intended, but the information is up. Here's an excerpt:

Many people select a trainer by joining a health club, and there are many solid, reputable clubs with highly capable professional trainers. You may want to enhance your selection process by doing some research on the web: we recommend that you check out two organizations that certify trainers: the American College of Sports Medicine (http://www.acsm.org/ and the National Strength and Conditioning Association (http://www.nsca-lift.org/).

The ACSM claims to be the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world. The organization’s website says it “continues to look for and find better methods to allow individuals to live longer and more productive lives. Healthy people make a healthier society.”

The ACSM has a locator function to help you find an ACSM trainer near you at http://forms.acsm.org/_frm/crt/online_locator.asp.

The NSCA “develops and presents the most advanced information regarding strength training and conditioning practices, injury prevention and research findings… By working to find practical applications for new research findings in the strength and conditioning field, the association fosters the development of strength training and conditioning as a discipline and as a profession.”

The NSCA also has a locator function at http://www.nsca-lift.org/trainers/locator.
You have nothing to lose but a few pounds and some of that flab!

You gotta check this out!

2008-04-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

OK, no beating around the bush with a long lead-in. Just know that a documentary film, “Young@Heart,” about a group of 80-ish rockers whose singing and dancing smashes the notion of a generation gap, opens today in New York and Los Angeles.

And you can see clips from the movie at this link:

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/405749/Young-Heart/trailers

“Young@Heart,” produced by Sally George and released by Fox Searchlight Pictures, is about the Young@Heart chorus, which started as a collective arts project in 1982 at a center for the elderly in Northhampton, Mass.

“The chorus has developed into a popular local ensemble with an international reputation,” says an article in today’s New York Times. “It has made 12 tours of Australia, Europe and Canada and serenaded Norwegian royalty. Accompanying the singers is a solid core of professional rock musicians who help ground their sometimes wavering voices.”

The movie “offers an encouraging vision of old age in which the depression commonly associated with decrepitude is held at bay by music making, camaraderie and a sense of humor.”

The clips at the link above include a music video of the Ramones classic, “I Wanna Be Sedated.” It will definitely “un-sedate” you!

I can’t wait until “Young@Heart” comes to a theater near me!

More Seniors Logging On

2008-04-08T22:13:00.001-07:00

Older people’s use of the Internet is growing, according to the April issue of AARP Bulletin.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 92 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 use the Internet; 85 percent of those 30 to 49; 72 percent of those 50 to 64; and 37 percent of those 65-plus.

Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenburg School for Communication in Los Angeles, notes that older folks are attracted to social networking sites.

Older users are less interested in Facebook and Myspace and more interested in communities with such online activities as chess, bridge, poker, Scrabble or dealing with the physical and emotional toll of a disease.

“Whatever the pretext,” says the article, “community has a pull that isn’t limited by age. More than 90 percent of users on both sides of 50 say that online community is “somewhat” to “very” important, and 100 percent of over-50 users report benefiting from their online communities.”

The magic of "renew"

2008-04-06T23:02:00.000-07:00

I don't usually quote myself, but this time I'm going to make an exception. In launching a discussion on the reboot social network (http://rebootyou.ning.com/) I posted these thoughts about the word "renew:"

I just looked up the word "renew" at Dictionary.com, and here are some of the synonyms:

Restock. re-create, rejuvenate, regenerate, reinstate, mend.

Renew, renovate, repair, restore suggest making something the way it formerly was.

To renew means to bring back to an original condition of freshness and vigor: to renew one's enthusiasm.

Renovate means to do over or make good any dilapidation of something: to renovate an old house. To repair is to put into good or sound condition; to make good any injury, damage, wear and tear, decay, etc.; to mend: to repair the roof of a house.

To restore is to bring back to its former place or position something which has faded, disappeared, been lost, etc., or to reinstate a person in rank or position: to restore a king to his throne.

OK, I'm not suggesting we restore a king to his throne, but don't you feel a freshness and energy in that list of words? Especially this sentence: "To renew means to bring back to an original condition of freshness and vigor."

Rebooting is all about renewal. I think in some or many ways we try to renew something every day, whether we think about it or not. Even if it's just getting enough sleep to wake up with a sense of "freshness and vigor." (Don't tell me that's not how you wake up in the morning.)

Even if you're sleepy, a new day is a new day. Having one is better than the alternative. And a new day is a good day to reboot!

"All Kinds of Different Moves"

2008-04-04T22:49:00.000-07:00

Scott Simon, Saturday host of National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition, Peabody Award winning journalist and accomplished writer, has written a new novel, his second, a political murder mystery set in Chicago and entitled “Windy City.”

In San Francisco today on a tour to promote the book, he was interviewed on KQED Radio’s Forum program by Dave Iverson, sitting in for regular host Michael Krasny.

After an introductory discussion about the book, Iverson asked Simon: “Is there a new book spinning around in your head?”

“Oh yes,” Simon said. “I have a lot of ideas, a lot of novels I want to get written. I like writing novels. It’s fun. You exercise different mental muscles and you’re not repeating yourself…

“I think the important thing is to keep challenging yourself, to do new and different things, so you don’t thread yourself into the ground. This refreshes you for everything. I think it makes you a better artist, which is important for me. I think it makes me a better journalist, for whatever time I spend as a journalist. I also think it makes me a better father and husband, because I’m learning new things.

Iverson: “How so?”

“You’re learning new things. You’re opening yourself up to a wider world. You’re trying new things. You’re keeping yourself flexible and maneuverable.

“Great lesson I learned from the ballet, which I love, and it’s one of my favorite sports, is you can’t keep doing the same moves over and over again without those moves breaking down. You have to do all kinds of different moves to build the whole muscular structure, because that’s what supports you in the moves you want to do.

“And I think that’s true in life, too.”

Profound and muscular thoughts from a very talented individual.

Just Fooling Around

2008-03-31T20:43:00.000-07:00

Happy April Fool’s Day. Or Silly April Fool’s Day. Or Playful April Fool’s Day. In any case, have a Fun April Fool’s Day, because that’s what the day is all about.

Here are two links with some historical (hysterical?) perspective on this auspicious day:

http://www.april-fools.us/history-april-fools.htm
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/aprilfools1.html

Here’s an excerpt from the explanation at the first link:

“The current thinking is that (the observance) began around 1582 in France with the reform of the calendar under Charles IX. The Gregorian Calendar was introduced, and New Year's Day was moved from March 25-April 1 (new year's week) to January 1.

“Communication traveled slowly in those days and some people were only informed of the change several years later. Still others, who were more rebellious, refused to acknowledge the change and continued to celebrate on the last day of the former celebration, April 1. These people were labeled ‘fools’ by the general populace, were subject to ridicule and sent on ‘fool errands,’ sent invitations to nonexistent parties and had other practical jokes played upon them. The butts of these pranks became known as a "poisson d'avril" or ‘April fish’ because a young naive fish is easily caught. In addition, one common practice was to hook a paper fish on the back of someone as a joke.

“This harassment evolved over time and a custom of prank-playing continues on the first day of April. This tradition eventually spread to Britain and Scotland in the 18th century and was introduced to the American colonies by the English and the French. Because of this spread to other countries, April Fool's Day has taken on an international flavor with each country celebrating the holiday in its own way.”

So the foolish message of the day is: Rebooting is not a fool’s errand! And that’s no April Fool!

RebootYou social network launched!

2008-03-27T16:56:00.000-07:00

Back on Nov. 12, I asked in this blog if rebooters constituted a community. Defined in Wikipedia, a virtual community is:

… a social network with a common interest, idea, task or goal that interacts in a virtual society across time, geographical and organizational boundaries and is able to develop personal relationships.

I said I hoped to jump start such a community, and asked readers to let me know if they had any ideas on how to do it.

Well, such an idea is now at hand. I’ve started a social network for rebooters at http://rebootyou.ning.com. Ning is a platform for social networks, currently hosting thousands of virtual communities in many walks of life.

I invite you to visit the new social community and join in. It’s easy to do – just click and sign up. Hope to see you there – and back here as well!

Helping pro athletes reboot after their playing days are over

2008-03-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

Great story in this week’s New Yorker about former Mets and Phillies baseball star Lenny Dykstra, who is launching a new magazine aimed at pro athletes called The Players Club.

With the magazine as his main vehicle, he wants to encourage athletes in their prime to set aside a half-million dollars a year in a customized retirement account to insure their financial security for later life.

“There are all these hard luck stories (about former athletes),” said Randall Kane, editor of The Players Club. “We’re going to educate these guys to take advantage of this windfall. ‘Keep Living the Dream,’ that’s our working slogan.”

It’s a fun article about a true character who says, “I’m forty-four, with a lot of mileage, dude. A lot of mileage… You get to a point in your life where, yeah, I loved baseball, but baseball’s a small part. I’m going to build something that can change the ---- outcome of people’s lives.”

He describes critical decision points in life as “like the one-one count.” A baseball metaphor, it means that “some moments, and the choices they bring, are more fateful than others (i.e., the next pitch makes all the difference)… If a batter falls behind, one ball and two strikes, he’s in a hole from which, the statistics augur, he will not recover, even if he is Barry Bonds; and if he gets ahead, to two balls and one strike, he wrests control from the pitcher and takes charge of his own destiny.”

Maybe you weren’t able to “set aside a half million dollars” for your later years, but the game is not over. Lenny might say you’re at the one-one count. What decision will you make about the rest of your at bat? A reboot could make the count two and one in your favor.

Speaking of brains, how fit is yours?

2008-03-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve just come across a fascinating company and website – SharpBrains, at www.sharpbrains.com. They’ve got what looks like some really good news.

SharpBrains is a research & advisory firm devoted to helping individuals, companies, health providers, investors, and policy makers understand and participate in the emerging brain fitness field through a variety of market-intelligence products and services.

The company says that brain fitness may grow one day to become as widespread as physical fitness, and brain fitness centers or "brain gyms" may complement today's gyms.

SharpBrains has just released its inaugural report on the emerging Brain Fitness Software Market, the first to define the brain fitness software market and analyze the size and trends of its four customer segments.

Highlights from The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2008 report include:

• 2007 was a seminal year for the U.S. Brain Fitness software market, which reached $225 million in revenues – up from an estimated $100 million in 2005.

• Over 20 companies are offering tools to assess and train cognitive skills to four customer segments: consumers; healthcare and insurance providers; K12 school systems; and Fortune 1000 companies, the military, and sports teams.

• More than five programs have shown results in randomized controlled trials. Cognitive functions that can be trained include: visual and auditory processing, working memory, attention, and decision-making.

Some day soon, while you’re checking out the latest running shoes, heart monitors and iPod carrying cases to use while exercising, you may also find yourself looking over some nifty products to improve the condition of your brain.

Try to get your mind around that!

To Prevent Brain Drain: Reboot

2008-03-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

Brain drain.

Those scary words describe what the aerospace and defense sector is facing as hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers reach retirement age.

“The problem – almost 60 percent of U.S. aerospace workers in 2007 were 45 or older – could affect national security and even close the door on commercial products that start out as military technology,” according to an Associated Press article by Joelle Tessler that ran in Monday’s papers. A link to the story appears below.

The looming labor shortage that will inevitably result as the Baby Boom generation moves out of the workforce and into retirement is one of the main reasons we started www.rebootyou.com. We want to help mitigate the shortage by helping as many people as possible extend their productivity beyond retirement.

There are a lot of ways to reboot. Staying on the job (if given the opportunity), continuing to work as a consultant, working part time, and opening one’s own business are all avenues to continued contribution.

We predict that many aerospace and defense companies will come up with ways to encourage members of their senior workforce to stay on the job for three to five years or more beyond age 65.

As a nation we can’t afford to have everybody walk off the job at the same time.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DEFENSE_TALENT_DRAIN_WAOL-?SITE=RIPRJ&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Rebooting, British style

2008-03-03T08:36:00.000-08:00

When it comes to rebooting, the British are just as good at it as the Americans.

An article in The Sunday Times of March 2, headlined “Starting a business at retirement age,” says “There is no age limit to setting up in business to exploit your experience. The golden rule is to do something you enjoy.”

The article tells the story of several rebooters, including Rayment Kirby, who started his own business making cameras from traditional designs when he was in his sixties. Now 75, he makes a range of modernized versions of traditional camera designs by hand in his home workshop in Heathfield, East Sussex. He sells them at the auction house Christies and on his own website, www.raymentkirbycameras.co.uk.

Frances Kay, editor of a publication called The Good Non-Retirement Guide, says more and more older people are setting up businesses. “They are doing it because at a certain stage in life they want autonomy and they don’t necessarily want to be working in an organisation for someone who is half their age,” Kay says. “People are living longer and are healthier so you probably have 25 years between 55 and 80 when you can get a heck of a lot done. There is a lot you can achieve and it can be hugely satisfying.”

Colin Weatherspoon, chief executive of Cobweb Information, a research firm providing information for startups, says, “Consultant-type businesses are a popular choice. Social enterprises and charities are also common – anything that involves advice… There is a market out there for experience.”

You can read the complete article at http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/entrepreneur/article3465326.ece

Endless possibilities

2008-02-29T15:30:00.000-08:00

I continue to be fascinated by the amazing reinventions I hear about. Here are three (and I'm hoping to get their stories on www.rebootyou.com).

A physician in his 50s who gave up his practice to go back to his alma mater and study philosophy, then teach medical ethics at the college level.
An electric lineman who retired from a utility and became a policeman, going through the Police Academy with all the other rookies. (True personal note: I'm writing this in a Starbucks and Glen Campbell's "Wichita Lineman" is playing on the store's audio system!)
An audiologist who is giving up her practice to become a minister and provide pastoral services to people in prison.

The possibilities are endless. What's your rebooting story? From what to what? We'd love to share it with others. Go to our website and click on the link in the "Share Your Story" section.

Use it or lose it

2008-02-28T22:04:00.000-08:00

On our website, http://www.rebootyou.com/, we offer help in finding an attorney, a financial advisor and a personal coach. In the next day or so we will be adding another important resource: help in finding a personal trainer.

I used to think that having a personal trainer was a luxury that only the very wealthy, or top professional athletes, would have. That was before I began working out with a trainer.

I've had the pleasure and good fortune of working with four highly dedicated and skilled professional trainers over the last 10 or 15 years. And I'm here to tell you that a good one is worth every penny of his or her fee.

These folks are experts on your physical body, just as financial advisors are experts on your money matters and attorneys are on legal issues. They assess your starting condition, help you establish goals for improvement, then take you through a very measured and effective program for achieving them.

Yes, a trainer will push you harder than you will push yourself, but a professional will never push you beyond your safe zone. And that push the trainer provides will give you an edge you probably wouldn't develop by yourself.

A good trainer will boost your self-confidence as well as your physical condition. And it's OK if you're overweight and out of condition to start. The important thing is to start and to stay with your program.

Your body in some ways is like your car, your house, your financial security. They all require maintenance. The old saying, "Use it or lose it," was probably first used to describe your body.

So use it! And have fun in the process!

OK, I'm new at this!

2008-02-27T17:27:00.000-08:00

Personal note:

So I missed a couple of responses to my blog. I apologize to those who stopped by and posted comments -- what lousy hospitality on my part!

The days of negligence are over. So please join in and post and I'll welcome your contribution.

Lee

The End of Retirement

2008-02-26T20:33:00.000-08:00

“The subject of my remarks is the end of retirement, and the profound effect this is going to have on all of us personally and on the marketing of goods and services in America and throughout the industrialized world.”

Say what? End of retirement? Who could possibly be saying such a thing?

None other than William Novelli, executive director and CEO of AARP. Even though he said this in a speech seven years ago, the message is even more true today. Novelli has written similar thoughts recently in AARP the Magazine and in the monthly AARP newsletter.

“Retirement as we have known it, as my Uncle Andy and millions of others practiced it, is largely disappearing,” Novelli said in his 2001 speech to the Institute of Public Relations. “And in its place there is a new, much more vital vision of how most of us will be living as we grow older.

“Now people are thinking of retirement as a beginning, not as an ending. We (AARP) did a survey recently showing that two out of three people 50 and older view this phase of life primarily as a time to begin a new chapter, start new activities, and set new goals.”

Novelli continued: “The most fundamental change in the concept of retirement is that it is likely to involve work. Our research shows that 80 percent of (Baby) Boomers expect to continue working in some form past the age of 65 – either for the money or for the fun of it. Many will start their own businesses. Others will work part-time. Still others will reinvent themselves and begin new careers, sometimes in order to give something back. This has implications for virtually every part of society: education, government, corporate America, the nonprofits, and religious institutions.”

What are you waiting for?

Boomers Hit Social Security Age

2008-02-14T23:02:00.000-08:00

Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, the nation's first Baby Boomer, today made history as the first of her generation to receive a Social Security retirement benefit. Having applied online for benefits at www.socialsecurity.gov, Ms. Casey-Kirschling, who was born at one second after midnight on January 1, 1946, today received her first payment by direct deposit.

As the nation’s first Baby Boomer, Ms. Casey-Kirschling is leading what is often referred to as America’s silver tsunami. Over the next two decades, nearly 80 million Americans will become eligible for Social Security retirement benefits, more than 10,000 per day on average.

From a Social Security Administration news release, Feb. 12, 2008

* * *

In addition to collecting Social Security checks, many boomers will also be receiving income from gainful employment after reinventing themselves. And www.rebootyou.com is here to help them do that reinvention into a new phase of work.

It may be the same work, or a new career. But the key fact is that it will be a fresh start, a new beginning.

For many, the receipt of that first Social Security payment could be called a commencement exercise. Only this time, without the Pomp and Circumstance.

Get those shoes on and just do it!

2008-02-12T20:46:00.000-08:00

Here’s more on the study we mentioned yesterday. Men in their 70s increase their chances of living into their 90s by avoiding smoking, obesity, inactivity, diabetes and high blood pressure to 54%.

Men who had all five conditions had only a 4% chance of living into their 90s.

The study, conducted by Harvard University researchers, followed 2,357 men for about 25 years or until death, starting in their early 70s.

The difference in longevity, according to lead author Dr. Laurel Yates of Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is “… not just luck, it’s not just genetics… it’s lifestyle. It’s get your shoes on, get out there, and do some exercise.”

You might say this ought to be published in Duh Magazine (to borrow one of Andy Borowitz’s lines). It certainly makes perfect sense. Smoking usually goes with inactivity, and obesity is a leading precursor to diabetes. Smoking, obesity and inactivity do not exactly lower your blood pressure.

Maintaining your physical health at the highest possible level contributes to energy, mental clarity and the overall vitality you need to reboot yourself.

So get those shoes on and do some exercise. Or get some exercise. Just keep moving!

You might live to be 100!

2008-02-11T17:50:00.000-08:00

Reaching the age of 100 might be easier than you think, even if you have heart disease or diabetes, according to a study published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The surprising finding might be attributable to doctors who aggressively treat older people’s health problems rather than taking an “ageist” approach that assumes they wouldn’t benefit, according to Dr. William Hall of the University of Rochester.

Here’s a link to the Associated Press article at Earthlink: http://my.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20080211/47afd650_3421_1334520080211-608505357

The study involved more than 500 women and 200 men who had reached 100. While two-thirds of them had avoided significant age-related ailments, the rest had developed an age- related disease before reaching 85, including high blood pressure, heart disease or diabetes.

The AP article also described a second, larger study of men in their 70s who greatly improved their chances of living into their 90s by avoiding smoking, obesity, inactivity, diabetes and high blood pressure. More about that study in my next post.

The best thing to recycle – you!

2008-02-09T22:44:00.000-08:00

Today I came across a magazine titled “South Bay/Peninsula Natural Pages,” one of several directories published by City Spirit Natural Pages of Lagunitas, California.

The company’s website (http://www.naturalpages.com/index.html) says its directories “are THE place to advertise holistic health, environmentally conscious and socially responsible products and services. We are in our 19th year of publishing natural living directories, and have a combined annual circulation of over one million.”

This Readers Digest-sized magazine has a natural food restaurant guide, a calendar of classes and events (topics range from meditation to fruit tree pruning to contemporary dance), a resource directory for natural living, feature articles, and ads for numerous natural and holistic products and services.

An article on the “conscious consumer” features, among other things, recycling. Recycling has become a way of life over the last 20 or 30 years. We now recycle newspapers, magazines, catalogs, glass and plastic containers, cardboard, computers, cell phones, batteries, scrap metal, and grass and yard clippings. It’s about getting second or additional use from scarce resources.

It dawned on me that RebootYou.com is about recycling the scarcest resource of all – us! Recycling ourselves – or reinventing, or rebooting – is all about not throwing ourselves away.

And cycle is a great way to think about moving into a new phase of life. The word comes from the Greek kyklos, meaning cycle, circle or wheel. Wheels, to me, always mean motion, movement. Which is exactly what Rebooting is about – staying in motion, keeping moving.

So, my thought for today: Don’t throw yourself away just because you’ve finished one cycle. Recycle yourself!

Knowledge is power – and empowerment

2008-02-08T08:44:00.000-08:00

A potential rebooter shared some of her feelings with me. While she was experiencing some anxiety and fear about an uncertain future, she also made this strong affirmation:

"I feel empowered to know that with time, the right choice will present itself to me. It may not happen all at once, and it may take several explorations to find out what is a good fit for me."

Reaching inside yourself and drawing on this well of self-confidence is a huge step forward toward reinvention. Couple that with the patience to take time to sort things out, and you’ve got a winning combination.

You can build your reservoir of self-confidence – add water to the well – by becoming aware of all the countless possibilities for creative reinvention that exist.

I’ve tried to present a lot of those possibilities for you on www.rebootyou.com. I hope you’ll spend some time on the site, looking into the various possibilities – going back to school, going back to work, doing volunteer “good works,” starting your own business, and others.

“I feel empowered.” What a gift. And it came from within. Another gift!

Soaking up the sun

2008-02-05T20:43:00.000-08:00

Enough with shadows already! Let’s “soak up the sun,” as Sheryl Crow sang in her 2002 hit.

And speaking of Sheryl Crow, today she was interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” The occasion was the release of her newest album, “Detours.”

At Terry’s invitation toward the end of the program, Sheryl introduced and sang the album’s title track, “Detours.” She said the song was about “the many journeys that we all go on that lead us far away from who we know ourselves to be, and how ultimately that detour demands that we come back and remember who we are and who we want to be.”

That’s a powerful metaphor to consider. I’ve taken so many detours they have long since become the main route. Have I found my true self? I don’t know for sure. I think I have, but I’m always open to new things. I think your true self is who you are right now.

Looking back, I see them more as forks in the road than detours. Call them what you will, they add up to our meandering journey through life. Mine have carried me to a fun and wonderful life.

And now you are very likely at new fork, a new journey of your own: thinking about rebooting yourself. Detour? I think not. Finding your true self? Ah, that’s more like it.

As Yogi Berra says, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it” (see http://www.rebootyou.com/ten_reasons.html).

So follow Yogi’s advice. And soak up the sun along the way!

Are you standing in your own shadow?

2008-02-04T19:22:00.000-08:00

“Manning moves out of brother Peyton’s shadow.”

The headline, of course, was about Eli Manning and his MVP performance in yesterday’s Super Bowl, leading the New York Giants to a stunning 17-14 upset of the heavily favored New England Patriots.

His brother Peyton was last year’s Super Bowl MVP. Eli for years has been compared, mostly unfavorably, to his older brother. But he demolished all the skepticism about his abilities, and accomplished exactly what his brother had done, with his masterful performances in the season finale against the Patriots, three tough playoff games and this blockbuster.

I was thinking about the power of moving out of someone else’s shadow into your own sunlight. And it occurred to me that a lot of potential rebooters might be standing in their own shadows, the shadows of who they used to be.

If you are, accept a lesson from Eli. Reinvent yourself as your own Most Valuable Player. Reboot yourself into renewed vigor and contribution. Find a new passion.

Who knows, you might even pick up a few endorsements.

30-year retirement? Here’s a better idea

2008-02-03T11:38:00.000-08:00

One of the big insurance companies ran a full page ad in today’s newspapers with the headline, “How long a retirement should you plan for?”

The headline continued: “Consider this: Hallmark sold 85,000 ‘Happy 100th Birthday!’ cards last year.”

The ad said workers today should plan for a 30-year retirement, citing life expectancy projections that a 65-year-old woman can expect to live until 87 and a 65-year-old man until 84. The insurance company recommends reforming Social Security, boosting retirement plan enrollment and passing (or keeping) tax laws that help reward people for saving.

“Let’s save retirement by saving for retirement,” the ad concludes.

We have a better idea: let’s retire the notion of a “30-year retirement” and instead use a big part of those years for continued productive activity – such as working, starting a business, teaching or volunteering.

By rebooting yourself instead of settling down for a 30-year Rip Van Winkle retirement, you can improve your mental and physical health and, if you so choose, continue to make an income.

By all means, do save for those later years. But don’t ignore the multiple benefits of continuing to stay active. Don’t “retire” right now. Reboot, extend your active involvement with a worthy idea, and “retire” later – way later!

Don’t be afraid of your shadow

2008-02-02T09:17:00.000-08:00

It’s Groundhog Day, the traditional day when Punxsutawney Phil emerges from hibernation and either sees his shadow (six more weeks of winter) or not (early arrival of spring.)

In “Groundhog Day” the movie, Bill Murray plays a TV weather forecaster who finds himself trapped by the weather in Punxsutawney, and gets caught in a time loop where the days repeat themselves over and over.

I found a remarkable essay on the movie at the website Transparency (http://www.transparencynow.com/groundhog.htm). It says in part:

Whereas most of us go semi-automatically through most of our (very similar) days, he (Murray) is forced to stop and treat each day like a world onto itself, and decide how to use it. In the end, he undergoes a breakthrough to a more authentic self in which intimacy, creativity and compassion come naturally - a self that was trapped inside him and that could only be freed by trapping him.

Your true self – the one ready to do something different – may be waiting on the other side of Groundhog Day. You don’t really want to climb back into your hibernation, do you?

Is your learning curve going up?

2008-01-31T15:36:00.000-08:00

I was working a crossword puzzle today and came across this clue: “Graphic representation of progress.” The answer: “learning curve.”

Which way is yours pointing these days? Up? Sideways? Not down, I hope!

Here’s a link to my personal learning curve story on the RebootYou website: http://www.rebootyou.com/learningcurve.html. I realized some years ago that I’m happiest when I’m learning – when the curve is pointed up.

I know many people feel the same way. If you need some encouragement to dive back into learning, spend some time on the website (www.rebootyou.com). I think you’ll find lots of inspiration there, including both resources and the stories of people who have reinvented themselves.

Being of (ultra)sound mind and body...

2008-01-28T23:06:00.000-08:00

Today I had an ultrasound test to check my carotid arteries. My doctor ordered the test because an earlier CT scan, designed to look only at the brain, had shown an “incidental finding” of “dense calcification” in those very important vessels. He had ordered the CT scan because of some recent incidents of my forgetfulness and a close family member who suffered from dementia.

Although I had shown no symptoms of atherosclerosis – hardening of the arteries --my doctor prudently ordered the ultrasound check to get a closer look than the CT scan provided. The carotid artery is not to be taken lightly. It travels up each side of the neck and branches into smaller vessels that supply blood to the brain. The carotid arteries are a common location for hardening of the artery wall to occur.

Atherosclerosis occurs when fat (cholesterol) and calcium build up in the inner lining of the arteries, forming a substance called plaque. Over time, the fat and calcium buildup narrows the artery and blocks blood flow through it. When atherosclerosis affects the arteries that supply blood to the brain, it may cause a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or stroke.

For some reason, between the time the doctor discussed the CT scan with me and the scheduling of the ultrasound a few days later, I did not become super-worried about the possibility that I would be diagnosed with hardening of the arteries. I realized that this could happen, but somehow it didn’t make me a nervous wreck. Denial? Maybe. Overoptimism? I hoped not.

It wasn’t until the test was under way that I got worried about the possibilities. All of a sudden I realized this could be serious. At one point I could see the images on the screen that the technologist – a sonographer – was monitoring. I’d never seen such images before, but it was clearly some kind of fluid, in some kind of pulsating flow, in some kind of tube. Guess what. My blood, my arteries, being pumped by my heart. O-kaaaaaaay.

Fortunately, the test showed nothing out of the ordinary. I was relieved, of course. But the major reminder for me was that every day we wake up in reasonably good health is a blessing. Every day that blood is pulsing through those arteries the way it is supposed to is a gift. And we should never take a single one of those days, or our health, for granted.

Walking the Walk

2008-01-19T15:52:00.000-08:00

A longtime friend of mine, currently a business executive, has an employee who is facing retirement after 20 years with their company. This individual is unsure of what she might do after leaving, and is anxious about her future. My friend wanted to help make the employee’s transition as smooth as possible, and at the same time provide her with more than a pat on the back and a “thanks for your two decades of service.”

He asked me to meet with her and offer her some advice and suggestions, based on my experience to date with RebootYou.com. His request was gratifying, but it also made me a little nervous. Dispensing advice from the comfort of an arm’s-length website is one thing. Meeting face to face with someone at the “retire/reboot” crossroads, and offering personal counsel, is something else altogether.

The meeting is coming up in about a week. I’ve prepared some thoughts on what I might say, and printed out some pages from the website. I have a book and some other resources that I’m going to give her.

This will be a test for me. I’ve talked the talk for a few months, and now I have to walk the walk. I hope I can provide value for this woman. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Time for a mega-resolution!

2008-01-08T13:14:00.000-08:00

I was at the gym on Jan. 5 and the place was packed with hard-working exercisers. Almost every treadmill, elliptical trainer and stationary bike was in use. The free weight section was so crowded it was hard to find any open space.

“All the New Year’s resolutions people are here,” said my trainer. “Next week the crowd will be much smaller and by the end of the month it’ll be back to normal.”

Whether or not you keep those resolutions you make every year, it’s a good time to think about a mega-resolution: reinventing yourself. January is a time of renewal, and there is no better time to kick off a new career than right now.

Our website, www.rebootyou.com, has all the resources and inspirational reinvention stories you need to restart your engines. So take a look, take the plunge and discover the many benefits of rebooting yourself.

And who knows? Along the way, you may be able to check off some of those “got to lose a few pounds this year” items on your resolution list!

Hoping You 'Hit' All Your Goals!

2007-12-15T09:28:00.000-08:00

The following piece has been making the rounds on the internet. It was sent to me as something comedian George Carlin said, but a quick Google search indicated that the Carlin attribution was a hoax, that he never said this. Whoever wrote it – and I will give credit to anyone who proves authorship – I got a hearty chuckle out of it, and I wanted to pass it along:

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions.

"How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five! That's the key.

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

"How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life. You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony. YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80's and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I Was JUST 92."

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!"

May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!

Phil Knight -- Rebooter (or maybe Re-Shoe-er?)

2007-12-03T11:22:00.000-08:00

I just read a remarkable story in today's Wall Street Journal (Dec. 3, 2007) about Philip H. Knight, the billionaire founder of Nike, the world's largest sportswear company.

It turns out that Knight, renowned for his seclusion and secrecy, has been quietly attending creative writing classes at Stanford University for three years. He has told fellow students that he is writing a novel. And he has been a full participant in his classes -- sharing his homework with other students, debating themes and characters in novels and, with his wife, Penny, hosting after-class get-togethers with students at Palo Alto bars.

Knight is an exceptional figure on the Stanford campus for reasons other than just being an older "adult student." He has given $102 million to the Stanford Graduate School of Business (from which he garduated in 1962), funded a professorship at the business school, donated a graduate school building and made gifts to the athletic department.

Edward Schwarzschild, a novelist who visited one of Knight's classes, is quoted as being struck by his unassuming approach to learning the writing craft. "He could easily import someone, fly them up in a helicopter," Schwarzschild says. "But he wanted to be a part of a true workshop, as an equal. He didn't want to be CEO. He wanted to be Phil Knight, the student."

Makes me want to head for a Nike store and re-shoe myself.

Pleasure, Purpose and a Reason for Living

2007-11-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

The New York Times had a sobering article on Nov. 27 about the incidence of suicide among older Americans. Although people 65 and older make up only 12 percent of the population, they represent 16 to 25 percent of the suicides. Four out of five suicides in older adults are men.

The article, by Jane E. Brody, noted that while depression is the main precipitant of suicide at all ages, social isolation is an important risk factor for suicide among the elderly. "And older men, more so than older women, often become socially isolated," Brody wrote.

Dr. Gregory K. Brown, a suicide specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, recommended that older people make every effort to prevent depression in the first place by maintaining a regular cycle and planning activities that "give them pleasure, purpose and a reason for living." He suggested "social activities of any type -- joining a book club or bowling league, going to a senior center or gym, taking courses at a local college, hanging out at the coffee shop."

Dr. Brown said any activity a person is capable of doing can help ward off depression. Rebooting yourself into a new career or pursuit is certainly one way to stay active in the later years and maintain good mental health.

Two Amazing Stories of Reinvention

2007-11-18T22:23:00.000-08:00

Are you hesitating to reboot yourself because you’re afraid you might have lost your edge, let your skills go stale, or become unable to do what you used to do?

This happens sometimes. Self doubt creeps in like an unwelcome visitor, displacing self confidence. You’d go out and really do something new and exciting, but … you are worried that you don’t have what it takes any more.

If this description fits you, then consider two amazing people whose stories have just come to my attention. They are Izumi Tateno, 71, and Leon Fleisher, 80. Both were concert pianists who lost the use of their right hands – Tateno through a stroke and Fleisher through a neurological disorder called focal dystonia. Both have become inspirations to millions by learning to play pieces composed for the left hand only. Fleisher has undergone an almost miraculous recovery and can once again play with both hands.

Tateno’s reinvention as a one-handed artist was reported in the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 12. During a concert in 2002, he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right side. He became discouraged and frustrated that he could not quickly recover the use of his right hand, and for a while refused to play music for the left hand.

His son Janne visited him in 2003 and left on his piano some scores for the left hand that he had found in a Chicago music store. One day Tateno began to play one, and soon became so engrossed in the music that he forgot he was playing with just one hand. “That’s when I realized that music was music, whether you play it with one hand, or two hands or three,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “That realization changed me completely.”

“Many people have told me I should just take it easy,” Tateno said. “But I am not interested in taking it easy. I don’t even know how to. I want to perform as I have done in the past 30 years, so I can share my music with others.”

Fleisher’s story was recounted in the New York Times on June 10. He first experienced problems with his right hand in 1964. Within a year his condition had worsened and he could not open the fingers of his right hand. He began to focus his talents on performing the left-hand repertory. Now, after more than 30 years of trying everything from aromatherapy to Zen Buddhism, and finally Botox, he has regained almost full use of his right hand. He says he never doubted that he would someday be able to play again with both hands.

“I just couldn’t accept it,” he said in a New York Times article on June 10. “And I guess my fantasy was that with the same mystery with which it had appeared, it would disappear.”

With all the remedies he has tried, including Botox, the malady has at least become manageable. “I would like to make it clearly understood that I have not been cured of focal dystonia,” he said. “A way has been found to ameliorate the symptoms enough to enable me to play this literature to an extent that is not only enjoyable but also presentable in public.”

If given the chance to rewrite the story of his life, Fleisher said he’s not sure he would change it. “There are forces out there,” he said, “and if you keep yourself open to them, if you go along with them, there are wondrous surprises.”

So let me ask the question again that I asked at the start of this post: Are you hesitating to restart, or start something new, because you think you’ve lost your touch, lost your confidence?

Tell that to Izumi Tateno or Leon Fleisher. They might convince you otherwise.

Are Rebooters a "Community?"

2007-11-12T07:56:00.000-08:00

I have this idea that rebooters -- people who reinvent themselves after one career and go into another (at any age) constitute a "community." Wikipedia defines a virtual community this way:

A virtual community is a social network with a common interest, idea, task or goal that interacts in a virtual society across time, geographical and organizational boundaries and is able to develop personal relationships.

I'm hoping to jump start such a virtual community of rebooters with my website, www.rebootyou.com. I realize that a network doesn't just spring full blown into existence, but has to grow over time. And growth is really slow when the numbers are small. So I need to figure out how to get more people involved.

Any and all ideas would be welcome!

American Association of Rebooting Persons?

2007-11-07T14:36:00.000-08:00

AARP is really getting into the rebooting game.

The feature article in the November/December issue of AARP The Magazine is titled "Retire? Heck No!" It features stories about five 70-plus folks who are going full steam ahead with no intention of "retiring" in the conventional sense of the word.

The article by Bill Gray describes the five as "supersuccessful doers and thinkers who, at 70 plus, continue to work at peak performance. All could easily have slipped into the retirement night years ago but they forged on -- happily. Their secret? In a word, passion."

[Lee's aside: AARP magazine talking about "the retirement night?" Wow!]

The five are:

Shu Chien, M.D., Ph.D., 76, professor of bioengineering and medicine at the University of California, San Diego. He attributes his energy to his constant effort to develop "brain muscle." "My mind is constantly working," he says, "and that lets me accomplish tasks with twice the efficiency of the ordinary person. I can do more now than I could at 50."
Elliott Carter, 99, classical music composer, who still composes daily at his home in Greenwich Village, New York City. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for Music and a Grammy. His 100th birthday "comes with a bit of anxiety," he acknowledges, but declares, "it's wonderful."
Dayton Hyde, 82, cowboy novelist and owner of a private wild-horse sanctuary near Hot Springs, South Dakota, home to 500 mustangs. "I wanted to pay them (the horses) back for the joys they gave me, by taking care of them in their old age," he says. "Actually, we're taking care of each other -- they're bringing me back memories and giving me a way of life that very few Americans are lucky enough to lead."
Barbara Bowman, 79, teacher, co-founder of the Erickson Institute for specialized teacher training, and chief of the Chicago Public Schools' Office of Early Education. One thing that keeps her going is the delight of learning. "It's so wonderful when there's a breakthrough in your field and you're back to being a student again," she says.
Irma Elder, 77, head of the Elder Automotive Group and owner of 10 automobile dealerships in suburban Detroit, who took over the business after her husband died of a heart attack 24 years ago. "If you ask me when I'll retire, I'll tell you it's when I stop having fun," she says. For her, running the business "makes me come alive."

Maybe AARP should go back to words for their name -- "American Association of Rebooting Persons!"

Staying on the job

2007-10-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

That's the headline on an article in the October 2007 issue of the AARP Bulletin by Bill Novelli, CEO of AARP.

"More Americans are working longer, into their so-called retirement years," he writes. "Some are setting up their own shops, others have changed jobs or even careers, and many are still at the same organization where they've been for decades."

Our point exactly. I love it when the AARP -- formerly the American Association of Retired People -- refers to the "so-called retirement years."

Novelli goes on to talk about the challenges older workers face in looking for work. Excerpts from his article are posted under "Hot Flashes" at www.rebootyou.com. Here's his conclusion:

"People who work longer contribute to their own well-being, to their workplaces and to overall society. As more Americans stay on the job, the trend is going in the right direction."

Let's talk about rebooting

2007-09-03T17:10:00.000-07:00

Working after retirement? What a crazy idea! I mean, come on. Retirement means what it says — retiring from work!

I used to think that. But that was before I “retired” and discovered the joys of rebooting. Now I don’t think retirement really means to retire! Retirement is just a time to start something else.

The purpose of this blog is to talk about current trends, events and commentary that pertain to reinvention and rebooting, to connect the dots between thinking or talking about rebooting and actually doing it. I hope you’ll join in the discussion.